E&;iy^i^ 






BY 

• PERCY MAC KAYE 




Class _ 
Book 



Copyright N?_JM. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



BY PERCY MACKAYE 



The Canterbury Pilgrims. A Comedy. 
Fenrts, the Wolf. A Tragedy. 
Jeanne U Arc. 
Sappho and Phaon. 



Uniform, i2mo. $1.25 net, each. 



SAPPHO AND PHAON 



*&*>&■ 



SECOND INTERLUDE 

Performed before the Herculaneum Curtain between 
Act II and Act III of the Tragedy. 




SAPPHO AND PHAON 



A Tragedy 



SET FORTH WITH A PROLOGUE, INDUCTION, 
PRELUDE, INTERLUDES, AND EPILOGUE 



Bt 
PERCY MACKAYE 



Nefo gtotfc 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1907 

All rights reserved 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 

Two Cooles Received 

APR 30 1907 

Cooyrleht Entry 

CLASS 3 XXc, No. 

COPY B. 



?S3^ 




.(15,-1 ' 


n»7 



Copyright, 1907, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electfotyped. Published May, 1907. 



NortoaoU $ress 

J. S. Cashing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



TO MARION 

<rvv fioi 7rtvc, (Tvvqfia, crvvtpa, 

<TV<rTe<f>avr)<fiopei, 

<rvv fxot /xatvo/xevo) /xcllvco, 

(TVV (TQHppOVl ooKppova. 



PREFATORY NOTE 

As the manuscript of this play is in press, the 
report comes from Italy that the momentous project 
of Professor Charles Waldstein, of Cambridge, Eng- 
land, for the excavation of Herculaneum is once 
more — after some years of vicissitude — in suspense. 

Whether that incomparable undertaking, mysteri- 
ous with the promise of hidden beauty and human 
revelation, shall be destined to fulfilment, remains for 
the civilizations, and preeminently for the Italian 
government, to determine. 

In so far as some of its potential aspects have been 
inspirational to the inductive portions of this play, 
the author desires to extend his grateful acknowledg- 
ments to Professor Waldstein for having provided 
him with frequent authentic information regarding 
the Herculaneum project, and to express his hope 
that the conception of that project — one of the 
noblest modern uses of the imagination — may yet 
attain to its legitimate aim and acclamation. 

The writer wishes, also, to express his sincere 
appreciation to Professor Francis W. Kelsey, of the 
University of Michigan (translator of Mau's " Pom- 
peii,"), for criticism of archaeological details in the 
Prologue and Induction ; to Robert Eames Faulkner, 
of Keene, New Hampshire, for his fine instigations 
to the knowledge of those alluring Sapphic Fragments y 
which breathe to-day the passionate presence of 
Sappho herself ; to Barry Faulkner, for the cover 
design of this volume. 

The stage rights of the play, in America, are owned 
by Mr. Harrison Grey Fiske, for Madame Bertha 
Kalich. 

P. M-K. 

Cornish, New Hampshire, 
March, 1907. 

ix 



DRAMATIS PERSONS 

I. Of the Prologue 

*MEDBERY, an American ] Archceologists engaged in 

PIETRA DI SELVA, an Italian \ the excavation at Hercu- 
DR. ZWEIFEL, a German J laneum. 

ITALIAN LABOURERS. 

II. Of the Induction 

*ACTIUS, a Pompeian player {enacting Phaon in the Tragedy). 
SOREX, a pantomimist, from Pompeii (enacting Hercules in 

the Interludes of the Tragedy) . 
HERACLIUS, training-master (Choregus) of the players, 

mimes, and pantomimists at Varius' 1 private theatre in 

Herculaneum. 
VARIUS, the Roman dramatic poet, author (suppositionally) 

of the Tragedy. 
Q. HORATIUS FLACCUS (Horace), the Roman Satirist. 
P. VERGILIUS MARO (Virgil), the poet of the Georgics 

and Eclogues. 
*N^VOLEI A, a mime {enacting Sappho in the Tragedy) . 

III. Of the Prelude 

PROLOGUS (announcing Farms' 1 Tragedy before the Hercula- 
neum curtain). 
Varius, Horace, Virgil, Mcecenas, Pollio, Guests of Varius, 

Citizens of Herculaneum (all as mutes). 

xi 



xii DRAMATIS PERSONS 

IV. Of the Tragedy 

(Conceived as being performed on the stage of Varius' theatre.) 
*PHAON, a public slave and fisherman of Mitylene in Lesbos. 

ALOEUS, the Greek lyric poet, a noble of Mitylene. 

PITTACUS, tyrant of Mitylene. 

BION, a child. 

PRIEST OF POSEIDON (mute). 
*SAPPHO, the Lesbian poetess. 

ANACTORIA, one of her girl-disciples. 

ATTHIS, another. 

THALASSA, a slave woman of the sea-beach. 

V. Of the Interludes 
See Appendix. 

VI. Of the Epilogue 
*MEDBERY. 

THE ITALIAN LABOURERS. 

* Medbery, Actius, and Phaon are impersonated by one and the same 
modern actor; Naevoleia and Sappho, by one and the same modern 
actress. 



TIME AND PLACE OF ACTION xiii 



TIME AND PLACE OF ACTION 

Of the Prologue : The near (J) future. — A subterranean exca- 
vation, beneath the modern Italian town of Resina, the ancient 
site of Herculaneum. The scene represents a shallow, semi- 
ruinous chamber, anciently used as the Players' 1 Quarters 
{behind the stage wall) of the private theatre of Varius, in 
Herculaneum. 
Of the Induction : About B.C. 25. — The same spot, in its state 

of original use and adornment. 
Of the Prelude and Interludes : About B.C. 25. — The fore- 
stage or orchestra, in front of the closed curtain of Varius'* 
theatre. 
Of the Tragedy (conceived as being enacted B.C. 25, on the 
stage of Varius' theatre) : About 600 B.C. — The scene, which 
remains the same throughout, represents a high promontory, 
overlooking the sEgean Sea, near Mitylene in Lesbos ; the 
temple of Aphrodite and Poseidon, exterior. 

Act I. — A day in Spring-, late afternoon and 

sunset. 
Act II. — The moonlit night of the same. 
Act III. — The next morning', earliest dawn until 
sunrise. 

Of the Epilogue : The same scene as the Prologue ; one hour 
later. 



EXPLANATION OF DIAGRAM 

INDUCTION SCENE {Projected) 

a Modern audience. 

b Bronze bench (from which Horace, Virgil, and Varius watch rehearsal of the 
Tragedy). 

d Door, blocked by back of ancient scenery (viz. : the painted drop depicting the 
^Egean Sea). 

e Exit to dressing rooms of ancient players. 
/ Footlights of modern theatre. 
m Modern curtain. 

/ Table of stone (at which Actius makes up as Phaon). 

v Door to passageway leading to the villa of Varius. 
w Dividing wall between Herculaneum stage and players' quarters. 



GROUND PLAN OF TRAGEDY 

A Modern audience. 

B Marble altar and base. 

C Caryatid of bronze (defining proscenium opening of Herculaneum 

Stage) . 

D Door of temple. 

£ Exit aisle. 

F Footlights of modern theatre. 

H Herculaneum curtain (disappearing through slit in floor of ancient 

stage). 

M Modern curtain. 

O Orchestra of modern theatre. 

P Pillar of colonnade in front of temple. 

£ Stage of Herculaneum theatre. 

T Tier of seats in Herculaneum theatre. 

X Steps ascending to ancient stage from Herculaneum orchestra space. 

Y Separate seat of sculptured marble. 

Z Row of seats in modern theatre. 



xiv 




GROUND PLAN OF TRAGEDY 

WITH IMAGINARY PROJECTION OF INDUCTION SCENE. 



XV 



Ex noto fictu?n carmen sequar, ut sibi quivis 

speret idem, sudet multum frustraque laboret 

ausus idem. 

— Horace : De Arte Poetica. 



THE PROLOGUE 

" Tutt' altro del mi chiama, 
Addio, Addio!" 



THE PROLOGUE 

Before the airtain rises, voices of men are heard singing in 
harmony. During their song the scene is disclosed, re- 
vealing a subterranean excavation, in the left portion of 
which Labourers, with picks and mattocks, are digging, 
slowly and carefully, the blackish earth. In the obscurity 
of the right exit, stands a mule with a drag-cart, into 
which the work?7ien, from time to time, shovel the sifted 
tufa-dust and debris. 

By the light of electric torches, the place is seen to be a 
shallow, oblong room, the semi-ruinous walls of which 
are painted, in Pompeiati style and colouring, with dim- 
hued frescoes} 

At the back of the scene are three door-spaces ; the two at 
left and right are boarded up with new timbers', the one 
at the centre is closed by a gate of iron-grating, through 
which — in the darkness beyond — are barely visible 
Roman pillars and, behind those, what appear to be the 
circle-formed tiers of stone seats. 

1 Note. — Of these frescoes the centre one depicts several figures 
in players' masks — evidently a mythological scene from Old Roman 
Comedy, wherein a grotesque, bearded demigod, in woman's chlamys, 
seated with a spindle, is spinning wool, while a nymph, garbed in a 
lion's skin, bends beside him, with her attendant nymphs grouped 
about her. From a green coppice near by a satyr looks on, grinning 
slyly, surrounded by fauns with sylvan pipes. 

3 



4 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

In the right and the left wall, respectively, is a door-space, but 
of that on the left only the upper portion is visible above 
the mound of earth which the workmen are digging 
out ; that on the right is partly concealed by a pillar of 
tufa {rising to the ceiling) which, on that side, frames 
the scene, thereby causing it to be several feet narrower 
than the actual proscenium-opening of the modern 
theatre. The ceiling consists also of vaulted tufa. 

Near the back wall, centre, is a stone table with sculptured 
front solid to the ground. Beside this, half reclined 
with his elbows upo?i it, bending near his torch over a 
papyrus scroll, is a young man, in a workman's blouse. 
His eager face, bare save for a light moustache, is intent 
upon the partly unwound papyrus before him. 

At the left, among the excavators, overseeing their digging, 
stands a man with dark hair and moustache, evidently 
an Italian. Near him stands a short, stout, bearded 
man with eye-glasses, clothed in an ill-fitting frock coat. 
He also watches the workmen narrowly as they pick, 
sift, and shovel the hard black soil. 

THE LABOURERS 

[As they work, singing to the popular melody, ,] 

" Addio mia bella Napoli, 
Addio, addio ! 
La tua soave immagine 
Chi mai, chi mai scordar potra ! 

" Del ciel V azzurro f ulgido, 

La placida marina, 

Qual core non inebbria, 

Non bea, non bea di volutta ! 



THE PROLOGUE 5 

" In tela terra e 1' aura 
Favellano d' amore ; 
Te sola al mio dolore 

Conf orto io sognero. — Oh ! 

" Addio mia bella Napoli, 
Addio, addio ! 
Addio care memorie 

Del tempo ah ! che passo ! 

" Tutt' altro ciel mi chiama — " 

THE ITALIAN 

[Raising his hand, stops them in their song.] 

Basta ! 

[Signing to the head-workman to pass him an object which 
the latter has just dug out, he takes it in his hand and 
examines it, then passes it to the man in the frock coat. 
At the ceasing of the song, the younger man in the blouse 
has glanced up from the table, and now, starting to his 
feet, speaks to him of the frock coat.] 

THE MAN IN THE BLOUSE 

What's your new find, Zweifel ? 

ZWEIFEL 
A bronze box. 



What is it ? 



THE MAN IN THE BLOUSE 
[Coming over to him.] 



6 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

ZWEIFEL 
If you mean by that, Medbery, what was its use 
in ancient Herculaneum, that remains to be deter- 
mined later — 

[Handing him the box gingerly \ with a wry look over his eye- 
glasses^ 

scientifically, not poetically ! 

MEDBERY 

You forget, Doctor, that this science of ours is 

poetry. 

[Taking the box to the table, he opens it with care, the Italian 
looking over his shoulder.^ 

Small ivory compartments ; here are vials ; dust of 
different colours ; is this chalk, di Selva ? 

DI SELVA 
[Examining the dust.~\ 
It may once have been paint. 

MEDBERY 
[Eagerly. ,] 
Paint ! Let me look again. 

[Di Selva is called aside by the head-workman, whom he 
confers with and quietly directs concerning the work of 
the labourers. Medbery continues speaking half to him- 
self, half to Zweifel.~\ 

Here are hairs — crumbling already in the air; 
these carved handles must have been brushes. And 
what are these letters on the lid ? Great Scott ! this 
proves it all. Do you know what this was, Doctor ? 



THE PROLOGUE 7 

ZWEIFEL 
I see it is — a box. 

MEDBERY 

I see it was — a make-up box. 

ZWEIFEL 

A what ? 

MEDBERY 

A box for holding the make-up paints of an ancient 
Roman actor — one of those players who used this 
place where we are as a dressing-room for their per- 
formances on the stage yonder. 

ZWEIFEL 

As usual, my young friend, jumping at conclusions 
and landing in premises ! Evidence, sir ; what's your 
proof ? 

MEDBERY 

Well, let me sum it up a little. We have now 
tunnelled into these bowels of Vesuvius for several 
thousand metres ; last month we finished excavating 
the interior of the theatre there — the cavea, the 
orchestra, and the stage. We discovered that it was 
built originally with a roof, though evidently that was 
destroyed by the earthquake of '63, previous to the 
final eruption that covered Herculaneum. 

ZWEIFEL 

I am in no need of a Baedeker, sir. Your proofs ! 



8 SAPPHO AND PHAOAT 

MEDBERY 
Pardon me. To-day we are just completing the 
excavation of this apartment behind the stage-wall. 
We have made here many pertinent findings — this 
charred mask, for instance ; that bronze hand-mirror, 
now crusted over ; those spears, evidently for stage use 
as properties ; all prove, it would seem, that we are 
standing in what was once the Players' Quarters of this 
ancient theatre. 

ZWEIFEL 

Perhaps. [Pointing right. ~\ That doorway also 
leads to more such rooms. 

MEDBERY 

Doubtless for the mimes and pantomimists. 

ZWEIFEL 
[Shrugging.] 
" Doubtless " — what a word ! Well ? 

MEDBERY 

Well, Zweifel [pointing left\ that doorway, which 
we are just unearthing there, opens, as you know, 
into a marble passage, leading about thirty yards 
northeast into the dining-room of a palatial villa. 
That villa, by the inscriptions there, was once the 
seaside winter residence of Varius, the dramatic poet 
of Rome, in the reign of Augustus Caesar. 

ZWEIFEL 
Please ! I am not a tourist. What has all this to 
do with our bronze box ? 



THE PROLOGUE g 

MEDBERY 
[Pointing to the lid.~\ 

Do you see those letters raised in the metal ? 

ZWEIFEL 

\_Reading.~] 
C.U. A. A. — Well? 

MEDBERY 

C. Ummidius Actius Anicetus. 

ZWEIFEL 

What, the actor whose name is scratched on the 
walls in Pompeii ? 

MEDBERY 

Known as Actius. He was popular there, as you 
know. But he acted also at Herculaneum ; he made 
up his face two thousand years ago here in this room, 
with paint from this box. 

ZWEIFEL 
\_With irritation.^ 
Are you an archaeologist, or an actor yourself? 
When and where did you get this specific knowledge ? 

MEDBERY 
Last night \tapping his papyrus scroll\ from this. 
I sat up till daylight deciphering these few lines of it. 

ZWEIFEL 

Ah ! One of the manuscripts we discovered in 
the library of the villa. 



10 SAPPHO AND PHAON" 

MEDBERY 

It is, as you see, charred by the tufa, and ticklish 
to unwind without breaking ; but look here for my 
pains. May I translate to you this bit I've un- 
wound ? 

ZWEIFEL 

\_Stolidly.~] 
I should be interested. 

MEDBERY 
Listen, then [reading from the scroll^ : " Here is 
written a Tragedy called Sappho and Phaon, conceived 
in verse by Varius the poet. It was first performed 
on the eve of the vernal equinox, in the ninth consul- 
ship of Caesar Augustus " — 

„ „ ZWEIFEL 

B.C. 25. 

MEDBERY 
[ Continuing?^ 
— " being enacted upon the stage of the aforesaid 
Varius's private theatre in Herculaneum, in the 
presence of P. Vergilius Maro and Q. Horatius 
Flaccus, poets " — 

DI SELVA 
[ Who has approached and listened.] 
Virgil and Horace ! 

MEDBERY 
[Continuing.'] 
— " and other illustrious guests, his friends, from 
Rome and elsewhere." 



THE PROLOGUE II 

ZWEIFEL 
[Fidgeting."] 
Very interesting ; but what of this Actius — 

MEDBERY 

So much, you see, is written by the scribe. Now 
follows a note by a different hand in the margin. 
[Reading.'] " On the above occasion, the parts of 
Sappho and of Phaon were enacted, respectively, by 
Naevoleia, the mime, and C. Ummidius Actius 
Anicetus, the popular player, who consented to come 
from Pompeii to act with her, because he loved the 
wench. These players, in their disguises, used not 
masks but face-paint, after the early fashion of the 
renowned Roscius ; but customary masks were used 
in the pantomine Heracles and the Sphynx, which 
was enacted in the Interludes by Sorex, the panto- 
mimist. The Tragedy was well received by friendly 
auditors, but has seldom been repeated before the 
multitude, the poet having taken certain liberties 
with his theme and verse unfamiliar to this time and 
people. The present manuscript was used as a 
prompter's copy, and is the property of me, 
Heraclius, Choregus of the private players of Varius, 
my master." 

DI SELVA 
[Seizing Medberfs hand.~\ 

My boy, I congratulate you. A rare find ! 

MEDBERY 

I think so. What do you say, Zweifel ? 



12 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

ZWEIFEL 
We must be very cautious, young man. In the 
first place, perhaps your translation — excuse me ! — 
may be flavoured a little with your favourite extract — 
imagination. 

MEDBERY 

[Glancing at di SelvaJ] 
Thank you. 

ZWEIFEL 
In the second place, it is very doubtful if we should 
put trust in an authority so manifestly at variance 
with the accepted facts of ancient histrionic art. 
How, for example, if your player Actius, in defiance 
of tradition, had used face-paint from this box — how 
do you explain the existence here of this actor's 

mask ? 

[Zweifel points to the charred mask.] 

MEDBERY 
[Lifting it~\ 

Why, you see for yourself; this doubtless was 
Hercules in the pantomime here referred to. 

ZWEIFEL 
[Puckering his mouth.] 

"Doubtless!" It is always "doubtless" — except 
to scientists. In the next place, sir, how are we to 
account for the lapse of time between the date of this 
manuscript and the eruption of Vesuvius in 79? 



THE PROLOGUE 



13 



Furthermore, as to this illustrious audience of yours, 
— these poets — these Virgils and Horaces — I must 
first see with m}' eyes — 

\_He reaches for the manuscript; but Medbery, retai?iing it, 
raises his hand mysteriously, as in warning.'] 

MEDBERY 
Hush ! 

ZWEIFEL 

Sir? 

MEDBERY 
Hark, Herr Doctor ! 

[A few of the workmen, now just departing with their torches 

— leading with them the mule and the drag-cart — leave 

the scene more dim. At the same time, a faint rumbling 

sound, echoing through the excavation, grows ever 

perceptibly louder.] 

Do you not hear ? 

ZWEIFEL 

Hear what ? 

MEDBERY 
[ With a swift smile toward di Selva.] 
Ah, Zweifel, we must be cautious — very cautious 
— in these excavations. We must not offend this 
antique world. 

ZWEIFEL 
Offend what ? 

MEDBERY 

We must not forget the prerogatives of these 
ancient citizens in their Limbo ; their shades flitted 
to and fro in the dimness forever ; they never died. 



14 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

ZWEIFEL 
What the devil do you mean ? 

MEDBERY 

Mean ? 

[Tiptoeing to the iron grating and opening it, he peers into the 
dark theatre, while the rumbling sound increases to a 
hollow, murmurous thunder ^\ 

Listen again ! This lost world under the lava — 
'tis not like ours up there in the daylight. Here in 
the dark, these Herculaneans — they have had no need 
of eye-glasses, nay, for twice these thousand years. 
And if we hunt them only with our eyes we shall 
never quarry them. Yet if we doubt them they will 
only mock us the more, — like that! Herr Doctor! 
do you hear them now ? They have heard you — 
those departed poets, those Horaces and Virgils, those 
Maecenases and Pollios, those dead illustrious guests 
of Varius ! Hark, they are mocking you, Doctor ! 
They are mocking, for look there in the dark : they 
have risen in their seats — that ancient audience ; 
they are applauding their poet's play — Sappho 
and Phaon ; they are rolling their applause over 
your head, Herr Zweifel, in thunder and in ashes — 
ashes of reprehension ! 

ZWEIFEL 

[Exasperated. ~\ 
Ashes of stratification ! Very true, young man. 
Your nerves are deranged by insomnia. That rum- 
bling is the noise of carriage wheels on the road 



THE PROLOGUE 1 5 

to Resina above us — precisely twenty-two and a 
half metres up there in a plumb line through the 
tufa bed — which reminds me that I ordered a car- 
riage for Naples at noon. \Taking out his watch.'] 
Twelve o'clock — just; and lunch-time. — Are yon 
coming, gentlemen ? 

DI SELVA 

In a moment. I'll bring the men along for their 
hour of sunshine. 

ZWEIFEL 

\_To Medbery.] 

By the way, my Romanticist, I am going to the 
theatre to-night in Naples to see young Salvini in 
CEdipus. Will you come in my carriage and join 
me ? 

MEDBERY 

Many thanks, Doctor, but you see I am just now 
allured by an older player of tragedy — this Actius, 
whose role was Phaon. 

ZWEIFEL 

May you enjoy him — in papyrus, sir. I advise 
you to join his profession. 

MEDBERY 
[Abstractedly. ~] 

His profession was not as honoured in Herculaneum 
as Salvini's is in Naples. 



l6 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

ZWEIFEL 
[Lighting a cigar, departs, speaking to di Selva as he goes.~\ 

Don't forget to lock the gates ; we must keep out 
the thieves and Cook's tourists. 

[Exit, right.~\ 

DI SELVA 
[Locking the grated iron gate."] 

This find of yours will arouse great interest, 
Medbery. 

MEDBERY 

I believe so, but it is all thanks to you, my dear 
di Selva ; thanks, too, to your King of Italy, who has 
had the greatness of initiative to gather all the 
modern civilizations of the world harmoniously to 
this aspiring task : the excavation of Herculaneum. I 
remember well, some years ago, — it was about 1906 or 
'07 — how deeply you were discouraged. You had laid 
your electrifying plan before the heads of the Nations 
— to restore together their common heritage ; they 
responded generously, but soon delay and complica- 
tion and controversy set in darkly. The people were 
apathetic — blindfold. Apathetic, good God ! Here 
was one spot — one only in all the soil of Europe — 
where the Goth had never pillaged, the Saracen had 
never burned, the insensate Christian centuries had 
never ravaged — the art, the loveliness, the knowledge 
of the ancient world. And this one spot was saved 
from these ravages of man by Nature herself — saved 
by fire, by the cataclysm of Vesuvius. Two thou- 



THE PROLOGUE 1 7 

sand years in lava and oblivion ! and you said to the 
Nations, Look ! — Hellas, Alexandria, Rome, the 
Augustan Age, they are not burned, not crumbled ; 
their marbles, their pillars, their papyri, exist now 
and here, they are yours to-day — yours ', and for 
what ? Why, for a pick and a shovel and a penny 
and a heart of desire from every man of you. — 
Apathetic ! Why, where was even a drunken miner 
buried alive in the earth by a crumbled shaft, but his 
fellows and townsmen would dig for him — dig till 
they fell from the foul gases a mile underground; 
and will not man — all the nations of mankind — dig 
a hundred feet to restore the sun to Sophocles and 
Sappho and Menander ? 

Ah, yes, but they will, — they have, thank God ! 
Man has heard at last their muffled cry through the 
lava — their prayer to live again ! And we are here 
now, because of you, my friend. And this scroll is 
but one, the poor first of a thousand others, whose 
titles you and I have seen, and whose words shall 
sound among the nations within the year. And 
that Apollo of Praxiteles, which we dug out last week, 
stands sunlit now in the Naples Museum, because 
long since you dreamed of him in darkness — the 
god in the pumice stone. 

DI SELVA 

[To Medbery, who has taken his hands and pressed them.~] 
It is pleasant, my friend, to see our dreams come 
true. But now the men need their lunch. Are 
you coming ? 
c 



1 8 SAPPHO AND PHAOIST 

MEDBERY 

No. [Unwinds the papyrus scroll.] I will stay 
here [smiling] — and lunch with Naevoleia. 

DI SELVA 

Well, we'll return in an hour. 

[Laughing back as he goes.] 

Good appetite ! Addio ! 

[Exit at right. The Labourers, having taken up their lunch- 
pails, follow him, resuming their singing, which grows 
fainter and dies away through the excavations.] 

THE LABOURERS 

Di bacie d'armonia 

E 1' aura tua ripiena, 
O magica Sirena 

Fedel, fedele a te saro ! 

Al mio pensier piu teneri 

Ritornano gl' instanti 
Le gioje e le memorie 

Di miei felici di — oh ! 

Addio, mia bella Napoli, 

Addio, addio ! 
Addio care memorie 

Del tempo ah ! che fuggi ! 



THE PROLOGUE 1 9 

MEDBERY 

[Stands alone in the dimness — his one torch still gleaming 

by the table.~\ 

I wonder was she pretty — "Naevoleia, the mime!" 
Yes, yes, I can see her : there she stood and looked 
— a little wickedly? — at Actius here : Actius [glanc- 
ing at his scroll^ " who-consented to come from Pompeii 
to act with her, because he loved the wench." The 
wench, puellulam, dubious word for a lady ! But 
then the player folk were outcasts — despicable in the 
world's eye: poor vermin ! And still they loved, like 
us ; laughed — like us; and died — all poor vermin ! 

[ Going slowly to the table, lays down the scroll, and gazes 
at the bronze box.~\ 

Iteration — reiteration! — how this underworld re- 
echoes the word, forever ! Exit ; enter ; exeunt 
omnes — forever. 

[Sitting behind the table and the broad mirror, crusted with 
verdigris, he toys with the ancient brushes v] 

Actius, you sat here ; your eyes looked out of that 
mirror; this dust was your paint. You dipped your 
brush there — so fashion ; touched your face — was it 
so, like that ? No, this art was a bit strange to you. 
Sorex, your friend in the next room, perhaps he could 
help you. Why not ? " Sorex ! " you called, " come 
help me." What was that? The girl-mimes were 
laughing ? He couldn't have heard you ? Nay, call 
him louder, then ! 1 

\_End of the Prologue?^ 

1 Here, without pausing, the modern actor, who plays Medbery, 
continues to speak the words of the Induction. 



THE INDUCTION 

Animas quales neque candidiores 
Terra tulit, neque queis me sit devinctior alter. 

Horace : Sat. V ; Bk. I. 

Odi profanum vulgus et arceo. 

Horace : Ode I ; Bk. III. 

Acti, amor populi, cito redi. 

Inscription on a Pompeian Wall. 



THE INDUCTION 

\From the right is heard soft laughter.] 

Sorex ! Hai, Sorex, there ! My wick 
Is low. Fetch here another light 
And hurry up. I'm late ; the play 
Will soon begin. You louse, I say ! 
Quit pinching of the girls and help 
Me paint my face. 

[From the door on the right there enters — carrying a hand 
lamp — an antique figure, whose head and face are 
concealed by a grotesque bearded mask. The lamp, illu- 
mining the scene, reveals the same rootn as that of the 
Prologue, now perfectly renovated, devoid of tufa or sign 
of ruin, its wall-frescoes undimmed, its furnishings freshly 
bright. Various belongings of actors and stage proper- 
ties are hung, or scattered about. Partly concealed be- 
hind the stone table and the hand mirror {in the spot 
where Medbery before was sitting) sits a man in 
Roman garb. Him the entering figure in the mask 
addresses with a kind of salaam."] 

THE MASKED ONE 

Great Actius' 
Obedient insect ! 

23 



24 SAPPHO AND PHAOJV 

ACTIUS 
[Looking up, reveals a smooth-shaven face partly made up.~\ 

What's the mask ? 

THE MASKED ONE 

I'm Hercules, in the pantomime 
We play to-night. 

ACTIUS 

I envy you. 
By Caesar, this new-fangled art 
Of painting your own skin — 'tis one 
Too fine for me. — Look at my face. 
How goes it now ? 

THE MASKED ONE 
You're exquisite. 

ACTIUS 

You're impudent ! — They tell me, though, 
Roscius himself did often act 
Without a mask. 

THE MASKED ONE 

[Hovering round him, begins to take the brushes and touch 

his face '.] 

Who told you so ? 



THE INDUCTION' 2$ 



actius 

Our poet, the lord Varius, 

Who wrote the tragedy, in which 

I play this role of Phaon. Well, 

He ought to know ; the emperor 

Paid him a million sesterces 

For his last play. I would I had 

A thousand of 'em ! 



Buy with 'em ? 



THE MASKED ONE 

What would you 



ACTIUS 

Buy ! Hark, Sorex ; keep 
This in your mask ; I'd buy back what 
I've lost — a wench. I am in love. 

THE MASKED ONE 
\Titters^\ 
In love ! — with whom ? 

ACTIUS 

With Naevoleia, 
That plays the part of Sappho to 
My Phaon. 'Tis the sweetest wench, 
The vilest slut, the dearest drab, 
The loveliest mercenary minx 
In Herculaneum. — Look out! 
What are you doing ? 



26 SAPPHO AND PHAOAT 

THE MASKED ONE 
Lift your chin ; 
I'll finish you. 

[ Turning him to the mirror, the Masked One plies the paint 
and brushes, and proceeds — without his perceiving it — 
to make up his face in the most grotesque tines and 
colours.'] 

ACTIUS 
[Lifting from the table some tiny figures of bronze."] 
Now swear me, up 
And down, and blue and black, upon 
These Lares and Penates, not 
To whisper what I say to her 
Or any breathing soul. 

THE MASKED ONE 
[Touching the bronze figures.] 
'Tis sworn ! 

ACTIUS 

Friend Sorex, Naevoleia has 
Deceived me. Ten denarii 
Per day she has received from me 
This seven months and been content, 
And hung upon my eyes with love, 
And I have worshipped her. By Styx ! 
Now comes along this Myrmillo, 
The gladiator — he that made 
Such big noise in the amphitheatre 
Killing your Pugnax — well, he offers 



THE INDUCTION 27 

A twenty to my ten, and she 

Takes him, and fools me. — Jove ! She thinks 

I do not know it. But to-day 

I wrote a note, signed Myrmillo, 

Asking a tryst; and, as you know, 

She sent an answer, by that note 

Which you did bring to me instead 

Of Myrmillo. The answer said 

She'd come to-night. — Ha ! have a care, 

You pinched me ! — I will show the wench 

She shall not make me ludicrous 

To my own face. 

THE MASKED ONE 

[ Whirling him round, thrusts his painted face against the 

mirror.~\ 

Look at it, then ! 

[Running toward the door, right, the Masked One is pursued 
by Actius, who catches up a lyre that lies near.] 

ACTIUS 

[Striking with it.] 

You dog of Hades — 

[The other, removing the mask of Hercules, turns and re- 
veals to Actius the face of a girl laughing at him .] 

Naevoleia ! 

N^VOLEIA 
Well, love, how do you like yourself ? 



2 g SAPPHO AND PHAON 

Acrius 

[Rubbing the paint off with his garment] 
I swear — 

N^VOLEIA 

Nay, Acti, keep your face ; 
Don't let it fall ; it makes a lovely 
Fool. 

ACTIUS 

But you changed your voice ! 

NvEVOLEIA 

Let's hope 
I am an artist, though I be 
A mercenary slut. 

ACTIUS 

Sweet love, 
You have not heard yet — 

N^EVOLEIA 

How you forged 
A note, signed Myrmillo ! 

ACTIUS 

But you 

Replied to it. 

N^VOLEIA 
O hypocrite ! 

ACTIUS 
Nay, Sorex brought your answer. 



THE INDUCTION 29 

N^EVOLEIA 

Worse 

Than worst ! — To steal a note, and then 

Upbraid me for your robbery ! 

ACTIUS 

But Naevoleia — 

N^EVOLEIA 

[Raging, thrusts the mask of Hercules into the hands of 

Actius (now bewildered) . ] 

Sorex ! Sorex ! 

[Enter, right, Sorex, carrying several masks of comedy. 
N&voleia rushes to him.~\ 

Take me away from him. 

SOREX 

What's up ? 
I'm hunting for my mask. 

NAEVOLEIA 
[Pointing at Actius."] 

'Tis there. 
[Crying on Sorex } s shoulder.] 
O save me from his slander ! 

SOREX 

Wench, 

That's right, wench ; weep thy heart on me. 
I'd rather feel thy tears than take 
A shower in the tepidarium. 



30 SAPPHO AND PHAOJST 

N^EVOLEIA 
[Turning upon Actius.] 
Reviler ! forger ! — Tell him, darling 
Sorex, what 'tis to be a loyal 

Lover ! 

SOREX 

Nay, he's no gentleman 
That is no lover. Look at me : 
In all Pompeii, where I was born, 
Lives not another lover, with 
A score like mine for loyalty. 
Offhand, 'twixt my two thumbs, I'll name ye 
A dozen wenches, who will be 
My witnesses, how I to each 
Have been a gentleman — that is, 
Within the meaning of the word. 
There's Januaria, Vitalis, 
Doris, Lalage, Damalis, 
Amaryllis, Florentina, 
Hecla, Romula, Quieta — 

ACTIUS 
[Stopping his 7nouth with his hand.] 
Shut up thy brothel, fool ! 

SOREX 
[Escaping, squares at him.'] 
By Venus, 
Come call me fool in the forum ! 

[Ncevoleia, drawing back, points to the door, left, — the same 
which in the Prologue was partly concealed and blocked 
by tufa, — where Heraclius has just entered^ 



Players ! 



THE INDUCTION 

N^VOLEIA 

Hush! 

HERACLIUS 
\_Raising his staff toward them.'] 

SOREX 
[Ducking behind Ncevoleia.~\ 
Lay low ! Here's the Choregus, 



HERACLIUS 
[Approaches, threatening to strike.] 

Less noise ! — Your master Varius 
Has heard you in the villa. He 
Is risen from the dining couch, 
And now is bringing here his guests 
To show them through his theatre. 

ACTIUS 

And has our master guests ? 

HERACLIUS 

'Tis well 
For you to know it. Play your best 
To-night. He hath from Rome invited 
Horatius, the satirist, 
And from Neapolis another 
Poet, Virgilius — both friends 
Of his and Caesar's. They are come 
To criticise his play, this first 



3i 



32 SAPPHO AND PHAOJV 

Performance. In the audience 

There will be other guests — the great 

Maecenas, and the tragicist 

Lord Pollio, and many friends 

From Herculaneum, Pompeii, 

And Baiae. — Look you know your lines. 

[Handing Actius a scroll — the same as that in the Pro- 
logue^ 

Here is the prompter's manuscript ; 
Glance over it again. 

[To Sorex, indicating the masks which Ncevoleia is amusing 
herself by trying on.~\ 

These masks 
Are ready for the pantomime ? 

SOREX 
[Showing them severally, ,] 

I wear these two, my master. This 

Is Hercules Dejected, when 

I sit a-spinning lamb's wool ; that 

Is Hercules Triumphant, where 

I go to woo the Sphinx ; this coy 

Maiden is Omphale, and this 

Her man-slave, Servus ; this one here 

Is old Silenus — would I had 

A face like that ! 



HERACLIUS 

Where are the fauns ? 



All dressed ? 



THE INDUCTION 33 

SOREX 
[ Whistles^ 
The mimes are here, sir. 
[As he whistles a second time, there storm in from the right 
a troupe of mimes, garbed as fauns, in various stages 
of dress and make-up. He radius checks them.~\ 

HERACLIUS 

Back! 
Not now ! Go back. 

[The mimes, shoving and pulling one another in laughter, 
return through the door, which closes after them. At 
the same moment appear, in the left doorway, 
Varius, Horace, and Virgil. Seeing these, Heraclius 
signs to Actius, Nozvoleia, and Sorex to draw back 
— up scene, right. ] 

Your masters! Quiet! 

\_Himself stepping slightly forward, Heraclius bows low, and 
stands waiting deferentially. Horace enters, talking 
volubly. Both he and Varius, in their mutual chaffing, 
address their remarks to Virgil, who stands absent- 
mindedly between them.'] 

HORACE 

[Saluting Varius with his gesture.] 
Hail to mine host Preceptor of 
Gastronomy ! — I say, my Virgil, 
Let no man lightly claim the art 
Of giving banquets, till he hath 
Deduced the subtle theory 
Of tastes. 



34 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

VARIUS 
\_Laughing.~\ 
Will nothing stop him ? 

HORACE 

Lo! 

With waxing moons the slippery shellfish 

Waxes, but not in every sea 

Alike. Peloris from the Lake 

Lucrine is far more exquisite 

Than Baian murex ; at Circeii 

Ripens the lush, lascivious oyster, 

The urchin at Misenum ; but 

At proud Tarentum breeds the ample 

Voluptuous scallop. 

VARIUS 

By the star 
Of Julius ! Must we stand this ? 

HORACE 

If 

Beneath a cloudless sky you set 
Your Massic wine, the thickish motes 
Will vanish on the breeze of night 
And with them every heady fume, 
But if 'tis strained through linen cloth, 
Its flavour's lost forever ! — He 
Who mixes Surrentine with dregs 
Of casks Falernian, may clear 
The sediment with pigeon's eggs, 
Whose sticky yolks, being heavier, 



THE INDUCTION 35 

Fall to the bottom. O forget not 

Your appetizers — Afric snails 

And roasted shrimps with lettuce — shrimps 

That swim upon the stomach — 

VARIUS 

This, 
Mind you, is Horace — frugal Horace, 
Who boasts he only chews a cud 
Of sorrel on his Sabine farm. 

HORACE 
[Smiling, nudges Varius.~\ 
He has not heard us. 

[Speaking suddenly and loud.~\ 
Virgil ! 



VIRGIL 

[Starting.] 

HORACE 
What's that you said ? 



Ah? 



VIRGIL 
[Speaks slowly and with a slight stutter.] 
I said — Did I 
Say anything ? I think the view 
Behind your villa, Varius, 
Is beautiful : Vesuvius 
Raising its quiet dome of green 
Above us in the blue ; below us 
The red roofs of Pompeii, and 
The sea — a blazing shield. 



$6 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

HORACE 

Ye Muses ! 
Send me a lung complaint and lack 
Of appetite, so I may live 
On scenery instead of shrimps, 
Like this your virgin, Virgil ! 

[Laughing, he embraces Virgil, while Varius, who has 
called Heraclius to him and spoken aside, now turns to 
Horace.'] 

VARIUS 

If 

You'll deign to turn your thoughts from dinner 

Upon my tragedy, I'd like 

Your judgments on these rascals here 

In a brief scene, before the play 

Begins. 

HORACE 

What is the scene ? 

VARIUS 

The one 

I spoke to you about at dinner, 

In the first act, where Sappho helps 

Phaon to mend his net. 

HORACE 
This is 
Your Phaon ? 

VARIUS 

This is Actius, 
The player. 



THE INDUCTION 37 



HORACE 
[As Navoleia approaches with Actius.] 
And your Sappho — what, 
A woman ? 

VARIUS 

Yes, she was a mime, 
But showed such gifts as made me grant her 
This trial. — Nay, I told you this 
Would be a play with innovations ! — 
Shall they begin ? 

HORACE 

Surely. 

VIRGIL 

I pray you. 
[ On a bronze bench, left, Horace and Virgil seat themselves?^ 

VARIUS 
Imagine, then, a net suspended 
Here, and the temple yonder. 

[Taking from Actius the scroll of papyrus.] 

Now ; 

The cue is : "I will mend it." — " You ! " 

[ Varius sits between the two poets, there watching with them 
the two players, who — changing now their mien and 
expression — assume their roles of Sappho and Phaon.] 

N^VOLEIA 
[As Sappho.] 
To mend is woman* s task. 



38 SAPPHO AND PHAOAT 

ACTIUS 
[As Phaon.~\ 

Are you a woman ? 

N^VOLEIA 

Perhaps I am what women yearn to be — 
Man. 

ACTIUS 

Did you grow here in the temple ? 

N/EVOLEIA 

Where 
I grew, or in what garden by the spray 

Or wave-lit cave my spirit's seed was sown, 

Surely, His thou who knowest: for methinks 

Thou also grewest there. 

ACTIUS 

It may be so. 

N^EVOLEIA 

Stood we not then as now ? and raised as now 
The net between us ? 

ACTIUS 
[Strangely.] 

Somewhat I remember. 

N^VOLEIA 

And even as now thine eyes shone through the meshes, 
And mine in thine : was it not always so ? 



THE INDUCTION 39 

ACTIUS 

[Relapsing to indifference, turns as to tie the strands of the 

imaginary net.] 
'Tis broken. 

N^EVOLEIA 

Ah, but shall be mended ; I 
Will tie the fibres. 

HORACE 

[Interrupting. ] 

One moment : Fellow, in what parts 
Hast thou been wont to act ? 

ACTIUS 

In all 
That meet the people's favour. 

HORACE 
[ With a wry face .] 

Ha! 
I feared as much ; what parts, for instance ? 

ACTIUS 

In comedy I've played Dossenus 

The knave, Bucco the bumpkin, Maccus 

The clown, and Pappus, the old dotard. 

In tragedy, Orestes, Ajax, 

Achilles, Agamemnon, Creon, 

And GEdipus ; besides, in plays 

By Livius Andronicus, some 

Odd score of parts — 



40 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

HORACE 

Too versatile 
To please the Muse ; for Tragedy, 
Though she will mix with grinning satyrs, 
Still does so with such sweet aloofness 
As when an honest matron dances 
To keep a festival. Play not 
To please your people, but your poet. 

VARIUS 
[Smiting.] 
Nay, Horace ! If you'll let him please 
Me, let him please the people. 

HORACE 

Fie 
Upon you! Let us watch 'em farther. 

N^VOLEIA 
[To Actius, resuming her impersonation.] 
You are a boatman. 

ACTIUS 

Yes. 

N^EVOLEIA 

Go you alone upon the water ? 

ACTIUS 

Yes. 

N^VOLEIA 

When you are all alone, are you afraid ? 



THE INDUCTION 41 

ACTIUS 
No. 

N^EVOLEIA 

Put you ever far to sea ? 

ACTIUS 

Sometimes. 

N^VOLEIA 

And have you never rowed to the mainland ? 

ACTIUS 

Oft. 



By tempest ? 



Once. 



N.EVOLEIA 
ACTIUS 

N^VOLEIA 

A storm at twilight ? 



ACTIUS 

Once. 

N^VOLEIA 

Oh, is it true, then, what the sea-wives tell ? 
Was she a goddess ? 

ACTIUS 

Long ago : 'twas long 
Ago ! I was a boy, and that's all dark. 

N^VOLEIA 

And have you never seen her since she sprang 
Burning, upon the sands of Lydia ? 



42 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

ACTIUS 
{Momentarily ardent.'] 
Sometimes methought — I know not. 



Still you dreamed 



NiEVOLEIA 

You saw. 

ACTIUS 

How knowest thou ? 

N.EVOLEIA 

Tell me your dreams. 

ACTIUS 

[Rapt] 

Oft ere the day, while all the slaves are sleeping, 
I and my boat put out on the black water ; 
Under us there and over us the stars sing 

Songs of that silence. 
Soon then the sullen, brazen-horned oxen 
Rise in the east, and slowly with their wind-ploughs 
Break in the acres of the broad ^gean 

Furrows of fire. 
So, many a time there, as I leaned to watch them 
Yoked in their glory, sudden 'gainst the sunrise 
Seemed that there stood a maiden — a bright shadow. 

N^EVOLEIA 

Ah ! You beheld her ! 



THE INDUCTION 43 

HORACE 

[Applauding with Virgil.'] 
Well done and aptly ! By Apollo, 
My Varius, is not this strange 
That player-vermin such as these, 
Who live in tavern-holes and swill 
Sour wine and soup of peas, and sit 
Carousing with their harlots, should 
Thus animate your poetry 
With power and truth ? 

ACTIUS 
[Stepping forward. ] 

Is that so strange ? 

HORACE 
[Turns to the others with a look of amused surprise.] 

What's this ? 

ACTIUS 
Is it permitted, masters, 
For vermin to discourse ? 

HORACE 
[Touching his forehead meaningly, glances with inquiry at 

Varius.] 

A crack ? 

VARIUS 
[Nodding, amused, at Horace, speaks genially to Actius.] 
Speak, rascal, what you will. 



44 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

ACTIUS 

My lord 
Horatius has deemed it strange 
That we, who live in tavern-holes 
And swill sour wine, should still be artists, 
With souls to imbue a poet's lines 
With animate power. For this he has 
Been gracious to applaud us, as 
Good players. I would ask of him, 
What is a player ? Is he not 
A man who imitates his kind, 
That is — mankind ? But what, my masters, 
Is man ? 

HORACE 

By Socrates ! The rogue 
Hath grazed in Athens, and been groomed 
By schoolmasters. 

ACTIUS 

Man — is not he 
An animal who imitates 
Also his kind ? Why, then, a player 
Is man epitomized, an ape 
Of glorious hypocrisy, 
Magnificent, because alone 
He shows the counterfeit his image, 
The hypocrite — himself. No schism 
Exists, my lord, between yourself 
And me but this : you are by nature, 
Skilless, what I am by vocation, 
More perfected. — You patch, you bungle, 



THE INDUCTION 45 



Where I excel. Horatius is 
Your part upon life's play-bill, but 
You blur with that, and imitate, 
Most pitifully, twenty others 
All in an hour. — My part to-night 
Is Phaon, whom my master there 
Conceived in niibibus ; 'tis true 
I too may botch and fail to draw 
The finer shades, but when I do, 
My art's at fault, not I ; my aim 
Is single and declared : to be 
Phaon to-night, to-morrow Maccus 
The clown, the next day GEdipus 
The tyrant, but while each shall last, 
To be at least an honest player 
And live the part I play. — I beg 
A moment still ! You spoke just now 
Of Athens and of schoolmasters, 
The name of Socrates you made 
An oath, as he had been a god 
Like Caesar, yet you — you that hold 
In reverence these philosophers, 
See how you scorn and satirize 
Their temple of philosophy — 
The Theatre. 

HORACE 
Sccrn ! 

ACT1US 

Not your plays, 
O poets ! No, but us, that are 



46 SAPPHO AND PNAOJV 

Your instruments of flesh and blood, 

Us players, in whose living eyes 

And limbs your wan scripts flush to life 

And flash their passionate response 

From the eyes of your breathing audience. — 

My lord Horatius, let me 

Reverse your question : Is not this 

Strange — yea, too strange ! — that we who thus 

Give radiant reality 

To your pale visions, are ourselves 

Despised, and by your cult cast off 

In shame, to share our dogs of wine 

With harlots, in a tavern-hole ? 

HORACE 
[After a brief silence, rising.] 
Player, we have deserved this, yet 
I'll hope you still may deem me more 
A Roman than I seemed. My father 
Was born a slave and earned his oats 
At public auctions ; 

[Indicating Virgil.~\ 
his kept bees 
In Mantua. I trust we all 
Are Roman gentlemen — all four. 

\_Horace, Virgil, and Varius, in turn, take Actius 1 hand, 
and press it cordially.] 

VIRGIL 
The cocks will cackle at the swan 
Until they see him swim — good friend. 



THE INDUCTION 47 

ACTIUS 
\_Deeply movcd.~] 

My masters, you have lifted up 
My heart and stopped my tongue. 

VARIUS 
\_As music sounds from within.'] 

The flutes ! 
Our friends are gathering in front 

To see the play. Maecenas there 

'Waits us with Pollio. Come, lads, 

And lacerate my tragedy. 

HORACE 

" Sappho and Phaon ! " You have been 
Bold in your subject — to portray 
The eternal maiden and her lover. 

VARIUS 

The subject made me bold, to dare 
What Sappho did herself aspire — 
To make her love live on, and be 
Perpetual as Spring, that comes 
Newly to generations new. 

[Lifting, then laying the papyrus scroll on the table. ~\ 
And if to-night these thoughts of mine, 
Sculptured alive in Actius 
And Naevoleia here, shall move 
To pity spirits such as yours — 
There's my ambition and reward. 



48 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

VIRGIL 

\_Opening a door — up, left — which discloses the back of a 

set scene on the stage of Varius 1 theatre.~\ 

Is this the way ? 

VARIUS 

No ; that door's blocked 
By scenery. 

[ Opening, at centre, another door which discloses a wide dark 
space — dimly lit.~\ 

This one will lead us 
Through to the orchestra, across 
The stage. 

VIRGIL 
[Closing his door.~\ 
Who did your scenery ? 

HORACE 

Our shepherd of the Eclogues still 
Pipes of the scenery ! 

VARIUS 

'Twas painted 
For me by Auceps, a disciple 
Of Tadius, the master. He 
Has pictured the ALgezn shore 
At Lesbos with a brush not dipped, 
Methinks, in common paint-pots. 

[ Waving Horace and Virgil to precede him^\ 

Pray! 

[Turning to the Choregus.~\ 

Look that your pantomimists be 
Masked for the Interludes. 



THE INDUCTION 49 

HORACE 
[Pausing in his departure, raises both hands in deprecation^] 

Dumb play 
Between the acts of tragedy ? — 
Worse than a curtain-show at Rome 

VARIUS 
\_Smiling, waves him in.] 

Wait till you see before you scoff. 
This way. 

\_The door closes. Actius, still moved by his talk with the 
poets, having gone to the table, sits and begins to put on 
the light beard of Phaon, not noticing Sorex and Na>- 
voleia, whom the Choregus, going out, has left behind 
him in the upper right corner. Ncevoleia now, tiptoe- 
ing behind Actius, kisses him suddenly and runs away, 
right. Starting up, Actius looks after her passionately.'] 

ACTIUS 
Wilt thou forgive me, witch ? 

N^VOLEIA 

[Throwing him kisses.] 

Forever and aye. 

[ Turni?ig to Sorex, snuggles close to him, and, glancing slyly 
back at Actius whispers, aside.] 

Sweet Hercules, 
Where is the house of Myrmillo ? 



50 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

SOREX 

[ Goes with Nazvoleia, giggling as she winks at him.~\ 

What, wench ? Nay, wench ! — Ho, wench of Venus ! 

[Exeunt. Actius sits again moodily and swiftly completes 
the make-up of his beard, as the laughter of players and 
girl mimes 1'esounds fro?n the room zvhich Ncevoleia 
and Sorex have just e?itered. Rising then with the 
manuscript, he lifts, from among other stage-properties 
near him, a spear and, holding it in one hand, walks 
twice back and forth, conni?ig the manuscript of the 
play held in his other hand.'] 

ACTIUS 
[To himself] 
That passage in the second act ! 

[The sounds of laughter are reneiued, and Ncevoleia 's voice 
is heard above the others ; but Actius does not now 
notice the sounds. Pausing in his motion, he lays down 
the spear and murmurs his part of Phaon aloud, gradu- 
ally growing articulated] 

Nevermore 
Shall you be sovereign of your maiden will 
Or single in your fate. Not here with priest 
And song, but with a spear, you have betrothed me. 

[Raising the weapon above hi?n, he smiles up at it — as 
the voice of Ncevoleia, outside, sings to Sorex *s laughter?] 

N^VOLEIA 
Januaria, Vitalis, 
Doris, Lalage, Damalis — 



THE INDUCTION' 5* 

ACTIUS 
[ Oblivious .] 

thou, my spear, thou singest in my hand. 

Thou art my power and manhood. Face to face 

Thou pittest me in combat with the gods, 

And raising thee, my mind is raised up 

Confronting heaven, till from those clouds of fire 

This slavish world grows dim, and all that sways it — 

The tyrant's hate, the galley-master's goad, 

The sordid trader's dreams of avarice — 

Dwindle to impotence. Thine is the war 

Which shall not end with time — war with those gods 

Which made men's misery. 

THE VOICE OF N^VOLEIA 
{Singing.~\ 

Amaryllis, Florentina, 

Hecla, Romula, Quieta — 
[Actius — his spirit completely lost and merged in the part 
of Phaon — slowly lowers his spear as, to the laughter 
of the players within, the curtain falls.] 

[End of the Induction.] 



THE PRELUDE 




tu, quid ego et populus mecum desideret, audi, 
si plausoris eges aulsea manentis et usque 
sessuri, donee cantor ' vos plaudite ' dicat, 
aetatis cuiusque notandi sunt tibi mores, 
mobilibusque decor naturis dandus et annis. 

— Horace : De Arte Poetica. 



sic priscae motumque et luxuriem addidit arti 
tibicen traxitque vagus per pulpita vestem. 



— Idem. 



THE PRELUDE 

To the music of flutes within, the modern curtain 
rises, disclosing to the spectator's view the interior of 
Varius' private theatre in Herculaneum — namely, 
that segment of it which includes the ancient stage, 
orchestra space [the outer curve of which coincides 
with the curve of the modern footlights], and the first 
four tiers of the cavea, or auditorium, — the said tiers 
being actually represented, on either side, only as far as 
the marble coping of a first aisle, which runs approxi- 
mately parallel to the modern footlights and disap- 
pears behind the [modern] ' wings ' 2 on either side. 

On the left side, the tiers of this auditorium are 
provided with separate, sculptured seats of marble ; 
on the right, however, the first tier consists of a 
curved marble bench, 2 the curve of which defines 
the edge of the orchestra space on that side. 

Thus the modern audience is seated, as it were, 
within the omitted [but imagined] segment of 
Varius' Theatre, facing — together with the Hercu- 
lanean audience — the ancient stage. 

1 These [modern] 'wings' depict, or suggest by the customary per- 
spective of stage scenery, the interior constructive outlines of Varius' 
Theatre. 

2 This bench — since no Herculanean spectators are ever visible 
on the right side — is, later, used by the characters in the Tragedy. 

55 



56 SAPPHO AND PHAOAT 

This ancient stage consists of a shallow platform, 
raised about two feet above the orchestra space, and 
connected therewith by broad, wide steps of stone. 

[At left and at right, in front of the stage, is an 
exit aisle.] 

At the rise of the modern curtain, however, the 
ancient stage itself is not visible, being shut from 
view by the Herculaneum curtain. 1 

The Herculaneum curtain itself is painted to 
represent the street exterior of a house, in the Pom- 
peian style. In the centre, set in a lintel frame, is 
depicted a wide, squat door, the stage platform form- 
ing its sill, to which the broad stone steps [aforesaid] 
lead up from the orchestra space. 

Above the squat doorway is a window casement. 
Both door and window are not merely painted on the 
curtain, but are devised to open and close practically 
when needed. 2 

The top of the curtain is designed as an overjutting 
tiled roof. 

Curtain and theatre are tinted and adorned with 

1 This, being constructed on the principle of all Roman theatre 
curtains, is not let down from above, but, fastened to a top rod, is 
drawn upward [by pulleys behind the scenes] through a narrow slit in 
the floor of the stage platform, close to its outer edge. Through this 
slit it stretches its expanse upward from the stage's edge to a height at 
which the curtain's top is just visible, and extends laterally, on the right, 
to a bronze caryatid [which forms the proscenium frame of the ancient 
stage on that side], and on the left disappears behind the [modern] 
'wings.' 

2 In such case, when the door is open, a temporary back set-piece 
within — painted to represent a hallway — conceals from view the 
Herculaneum stage itself, with its [Greek scene] setting of the Tragedy. 



THE PRELUDE 57 

the pseudo-Orient richness of the early Augustan 
age. 

In the centre of the orchestra space, raised one 
step above its level, stands a low marble altar, sculp- 
tured with emblems of the sea. Upon this stands 
fixed a slim tripod of bronze. 

Before this curtain, then, when the scene opens, 
are discovered groups of Herculanean citizens and 
guests of Varius, in festal Roman garments. 
Amongst them are Pollio and Maecenas, the latter 
magnificently yet delicately wreathed and garbed. 

To the piping of the two Flutists [who stand, at left 
and right, at the edge of the scene], all of these persons 
make their way, in laughter and conversation, from 
the right exit aisle across the orchestra space to the 
seats of the cave a on the left. Here, passing between 
the marble seats and mounting the tiers to their places, 
they disappear from view within the wings, whence 
their flickering shadows, cast down by torches above, 
and the humming sound of their conversation, give 
token of their presence in the theatre. 

This humming sound is suddenly increased to a 
murmurous roar, upon the entrance — through the 
door in the curtain — of Varius, Horace, and Virgil. 

These, as they descend the broad steps to the 
orchestra space, are hailed from the [hidden] tiers of 
the cavea by cries of " Varius ! Horatius ! Vergilius ! " 
and greetings, blended and indistinguishable, in Latin. 

Varius and the two poets return these greetings 
with smiles and gestures of friendship, and approach 
the first seats of the cavea. There, looking up, 



58 SAPPHO AND PHAOAT 

Varius waves his hand, calls, " Maecenas ! Pollio ! " 
enters the cavea, and, mounting with his companions, 
passes also to a tier beyond view. 

At this moment, in the curtain-doorway, clad in 
simple Greek garment and wreath of gold, appears 
Prologus, preceded by two slaves. To one of the 
slaves he hands a lighted taper, to the other a bronze 
disk with incense powder. Descending the steps 
with these, the slaves approach the altar, on the 
bronze tripod of which the one slave places his disk, 
and the other ignites the incense. Each then departs 
at either side aisle. Meantime, upon the entrance of 
Prologus, each of the Flutists — his flute discarded — 
gives blast to a mellow, antique horn, the sound 
whereof silences the Herculaneum audience. Simul- 
taneously Prologus raises his arms, as in invocation, 
toward the pale blue wreaths of smoke that float 
upward from the tripod. 

PROLOGUS 

To Caesar where he sits in Rome our Emperor, 
Remembrance ! and through him unto the mightier 

gods 
Be incense evermore ! — The gods alone discern 
What darkly man imagines ; his pale future's dawn 
And twilit past alike to them are noonday. We, 
Therefore, who meet this hour, expectant to behold 
Long-perished Sappho and her antique age awake 
To life, ourselves are ancients of a time unborn, 
Shadow-enactors of an audience of shades, 
And as this little smoke of incense, so are we 



THE PRELUDE 59 

On the altar of the immortals. — What are they ? — 

Ourselves 
That were, ourselves that will be ever : Ancestry, 
Posterity — they are the gods, of whom we are 
Both seed and loins : one race, one lineage of love, 
One continuity of passion and of pain ; 
And unto them this fleeting breath and smoke of us 
Goes up in prayer. — Vale ! Our tragedy begins ; 
And if the play shall please, — Shadows, applaud 

yourselves ! 

[Exit within the curtain-door, which closes."] 

Slowly then the curtain itself descends and disappears, dis- 
closing the scene of the Tragedy. 

\_End of the Prelude^ 



THE TRAGEDY 

Ktti TToOrju) Kal /xdofxat . . . 

dAAa 7TOLV ToXfULTOV. . . . 

— Sapphonis Fragmenta. 

B17 8* a.K€G)v trapa Oiva 

iro\v<f>\.oi(rl3oLo da\d<r(rr)S. 

— Iliad, I. 



ACT I 

Scene : A high promontory, overlooking the 
^Egean sea, sprinkled with isles. 

On the left, pillars of a Doric temple form a colonnade 
which, stretching away left, disappears behind tall 
cypresses. Behind these columns, tapestries of dark 
azure hide the whole zvall of the temple, concealing the 
doorway. Against the background, the contours of the 
pillars themselves rise vast and chaste into the ob- 
scurity of foliage — their capitals lost among ancient 
boughs. 

Near the centre of the scene, at back, against the side wall of 
the temple, built on a raised and jutting rock a?id ap- 
proached by steps from the colonnade, stands an altar 
of yellow marble, in which is sculptured a flying 
dove. 

Below this altar of Aphrodite, the foreground on the right 
juts upward to it in contours of the bare, weathered 
rock of the promontory ; in this, a worn crevice, near 
the centre of the scene, indicates the beginning of a 
sheer cliff-path, which descends the precipice to the 
unseen beach, the far sound of whose breakers, in 
ceaseless cadence, rising mur?nurous from below, catches 
the ear in pauses of the action. Near the cliff-path, a 
fire-urn, upheld by sculptured Nereids. On the right, 
the seascape is defined by a grove of olive trees, which 
grow ?iear to the foreground. 

63 



64 SAPPHO AND PHAOAT 

On the edge of this grove, chiselled in colossal proportions 
out of yellow marble, rises a statue of Aphrodite, con- 
ceived with the naive, pre-classic simplicity of an age still 
half Homeric. 

Similarly, on the left, a statue of Poseidon. These images do 
not obtrude themselves, but partly withdrawn in foliage ; 
their large presences overshadow in silence the action 
of the Tragedy. 

As this scene is disclosed to view, voices of women are 
heard singing in unison within the temple. 



THE VOICES 

Builders, build the roof-beam high : 

Hymenceon ! 
More than mortal comes the man ; 

Hymenceon ! 
But the maiden like a maid, 
Rose-pale, rose-red, 

Kala, O Chariessa / 

[From the temple appears Anactoria. She looks away, 
right, then turning to depart, left, encounters Atthis 
entering. ~] 

ANACTORIA 

So late ? 

ATTHIS 

O Anactoria ! 

ANACTORIA 

Our lady- 
Sappho hath bade me look for thee. — Not weeping ! 



THE TRAGEDY 65 



ATTHIS 



He hath not come ! My eyes are water-blind 
With staring on the sea, in hopes to espy 
His scarlet sail slope from the mainland. Still 
No sign — no little gleam — of Larichus. 



Thou happy Atthis ! 



ANACTORIA 
ATTHIS 

Happy ? But to-morrow — 

ANACTORIA 

To-morrow you shall wed with Sappho's brother, 
And win for sister the bright Lesbian Muse, 
Who hath herself composed your bridal-hymn, 
And he that is Poseidon's cup-bearer 
Shall be your husband. 

ATTHIS 

Shall I not, then, weep 
Because he does not come ? Three days ago 
He sailed for Lydia, to fetch me home 
Pearls for our bridal. Oh, I want not pearls, 
Nor any gift but Larichus, his love. 

ANACTORIA 

Why, he will come. To-night the moon is full, 
The iEgean calm. — What's this ? 



66 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

ATTHIS 

I had forgot. 
As I climbed up from Mitylene here, 
I met Alcaeus, and he gave me this 
To bring — 

ANACTORIA 

Alcaeus ? Give it me ! 
[She snatches a vase from Atthis.~\ 

Dear gods, 
Let not this trembling quake the promontory 
And topple temple and all into the waves. 
Daylight and dark ! — Alcceus sends me this. 

ATTHIS 
[Gazes away, sighing. ,] 
O little clouds, why are ye shaped like sails ? 

ANACTORIA 

A 

Fresh from his hands — himself the potter! Here's 
A painted vine, and under the ripe grapes 
A dove hath wove her nest among the verses. 
Verses and vase — poem and painter — mine ! 

\_She kisses the verse and reads. ~\ 

1 The sea-god breathes his heart in the sea-shell, 
And leaves it on the sands, to syllable 

One sound forever. 
O maid of Lesbos, murmuring one name 
Within this vase, thy lover's lips have vowed 

Passion eternal.' 



THE TRAGEDY 67 

[ With sudden abando?i, she springs to Atthis and embraces 

her.~] 

My Atthis, thou hast brought to me in this 
More precious medicine than ever healed 
Fever and ague. 

ATTHIS 

I? 

ANACTORIA 
You do not guess ; 
Of late I have been damned with jealousy 
That almost made me hate him. 



ATTHIS 
[Appalled.'] 



Larichus ? 



ANACTORIA 

No, no, you doting bride : Alcaeus. Quick, 
What said he when he bade you bring me this ? 

ATTHIS 

But that is not for you. — Ah ! twist me not ! 
Thou hurtest my arm. 

ANACTORIA 

Speak, then ! 

ATTHIS 

What should I say ? 



Whom is this for ? 



ANACTORIA 



68 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

ATTHIS 
For Sappho. 

ANACTORIA 
[Loosing Atthis, with a cry.~\ 

She it was ! 
{Sinks crouching upon the steps.'] 



Atthis ! 



ALOEUS 
\_Calls outside.] 



ATTHIS 

\_To Anactoria.] 

My friend ! I did not guess. — Forgive ! 

[Enter, left, Aloeus. He addresses Atthis, who stands 

before Anactoria.] 

ALCEUS 
Hath Sappho seen it ? Hast thou shown it her ? 
What did she say ? 

ANACTORIA 

[Ho/ding the vase, rises.] 

Your lady's in the temple, 
Training the chorus of her girl-disciples. 
This votive urn of incense from your lips 
Hath not yet breathed in her delicate ear 
" Passion eternal ! " 



THE TRAGEDY 69 



Came you with this ? 



ALC^US 

By Hephaestus, how 



ANACTORIA 

Oh, by Alcaeus, how 
Came this to you : this mad, this hollow love ? 
Look ! " Maid of Lesbos, murmuring one name 
Within this vase, thy lover's lips " — And are 
Sappho and Anactoria one name ? 
How ardent hast thou murmured that one name 
Up at my casement : " Anactoria ! " 
Now hers to her ! No other eyes but Sappho's 
Had done it! — Atthis, that it should be she 
Whom best I love, our mistress and our muse, 
Hath drawn him from me ! So she draws the world, 
Day, evening, and the dawn, to wait on her — 
Maiden and man, like an immortal. 

ALC^US 

So 
Love draws us all. 

ANACTORIA 

Not all ! To some of us 
Love beacons like a star. 

ALCJEUS 
[Smiling.'] 

A shooting-star ! 
That nightly fills anew his fiery quiver ! 



yo SAPPHO AND PHAON 

ANACTORIA 

And this is thou — Alcaeus ! O this air 
Goes black and red between us. Fare you well ; 
But when your Sappho comes here from the singing, 
Take her your gift — 

[From the height of the steps, she flings the vase at his feet, 
dashing it in pieces .] 

and when you lift it up, 
Tell her it is the heart of her girl-friend. 

\_Exit, righf] 

ALCEUS 
\To Atthis.'] 
Nothing of this to Sappho ! 

ATTHIS 

Dost thou deem 
Others as false as thou art ? She shall know. 

ALC^US 

[Springing up the steps.~\ 
But Atthis — 

[Exit Atthis within the temple. ,] 

If she tells her ! 

[Watching persons approach, he starts violently. ~\ 

Pittacus ! 

[Enter, left, Pittacus, followed by a soldier, to whom he 

speaks r\ 



THE TRAGEDY 71 

PITTACUS 
Say to the citizens, I will not hold 
Council to-day. The sea-wind blows too sweet 
Of lentisk and of samphire for my thoughts 
To brood on war ; the eyes of Sappho are 
A mightier tyranny than Mitylene. — 
Wait ; it were wiser to omit that last. 
\_Exit the soldier^ 

ALOEUS 
O seven wise men of the world in one ! 
Most civic lover — to omit that last ! 

PITTACUS 
Greeting, Alcaeus ! 

ALCEUS 
Pittacus is gone 
To smell the south wind. Therefore, citizens, 
Adjourn the council ! It were wiser not 
Allude to tyranny and Sappho's eyes, 
For Pittacus, elected by the people, 
Must keep one eye or two for votes. Enough, 
He hath a nose enamoured of the south wind ! 
What was that odorous phrase ? — Lentisk and sam- 
phire ! 

PITTACUS 
Alcaeus still is young. 

ALGOUS 
And Pittacus a lover ! 
What says Archilochus : 
" Lovers that stink of leeks 
Put samphire in tJieir songs." 



7 2 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

PITTACUS 
In temper temperance, 
My friend. 

ALCEUS 

In lack of sense 
Sententiousness, sage! 
How is philosophy 
Selling per pound ? I mean 
Without the fat, of course. 

PITTACUS 
Is not this feud too old 
For us to blow up fire 
In the ashes ? 

ALCEUS 
'Tis as old 
As when you, gutter-tyrant, 
Imprisoned me — a noble 
And knight of Lesbos. 

PITTACUS 

C T • FOr 

Sedition. Yet it seems 
You now go free. 

ALCEUS 

Bright gods, 
Witness this gentle tyrant ! 
Look where the shouting people 
Crown him with garlic leaves ; 



THE TRAGEDY 73 

For he hath freed from prison 

Alcaeus the seditious ! 

Hail him Magnanimous, 

And grant him in the Assembly — 

A thousand extra votes ! 

PITTACUS 
Sir, you go far. 

AIXLEUS 

Nay, grant him 
For that great-minded deed, 
Fair Sappho's admiration ! 

PITTACUS 
Insolence ! 

ALGdEUS 

Hypocrite ! 

PITTACUS 
[Raising his staff. ~\ 
Go! 

ALCEUS 

Sniggling demagogue ! 
[Enter, right, Phaon — his shoulders stooped beneath a burden 
of drift-ivood. Moving toward the temple, his path lies 
between Alcozus and Pittacus. ] 

PITTACUS 

Thou, swollen-up with words 
And bitter wind, presumptuous 
Fop — 



74 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

ALOEUS 
Mule of Mitylene, 
Bray ! Let the temple fillies 
Hark to thy hee-haw. 

PITTACUS 

Zeus, 
Chastise this man ! 

[Striking at Alcceus, who springs back, the staff of Pittacus 
falls and b7'eaks upon Phaon, who receives the blow with 
mute passivity and passes on to the temple. Pittacus 
slowly lets fall the pieces of his staff. ~\ 

Eternal Zeus, thy hand 
Hath interposed this slave. Look where he goes, 
Alcaeus ; dumb, submissive, yet my blow 
Fell undeserved. 

ALOEUS 

A pack-beast ! 
PITTACUS 

True ; and yet 
His silence hath a peace majestical, 
His unresistingness, an awe ! 'Tis we 
That, by comparison, are petty : we 
That for a snarling ideality 
Yelp at each other like Actseon's dogs 
To tear our master — our own self-command. 
Ah, passionless indifference! That we 
Might rather live like yonder sea-drudge, callous 
To quickening beauty, and incapable 
Of joy or anguish of imagination, 
Than thus in bondage of enamour'd pain 



THE TRAGEDY 75 

For that immortal being, Sappho, rage 

Vituperate and scorn each other, clutch'd 

Mind against mind, man against man, to possess her. 

ALC/EUS 
\_Cyni€ally.~\ 
Still you remain to rage. 

PITTACUS 

No ; fare you well, 
Alcaeus: go you in to Sappho first 
And I will come hereafter. Better were it — 
Far better than this venom'd wrangling — there 
From Aphrodite's rock into the sea 
For us to adventure the Leucadian leap : 
That leap which brings to passionate lovers — death, 
Or from the goddess, ultimate repose. 

\_He passes from the scene, right. Alcceus stands for a 
moment, moved by his words. Within the temple voices 
once more lift up the Sapphic hymn. Then from the 
temple emerge, singing, the Girl- Disciples of Sappho, 
and pass, left, away toward Mitylene. Sappho herself, 
followed at a little distance by Atthis, comes slowly down 
the steps, twining a fillet of violets, lost in the music. 
Seeing her, Alcceus approaches, passionate, but pauses — 
abashed by her presence?^ 

THE GIRL-DISCIPLES 
Gath'rers, what have ye forgot 

Hymenceon ! 

Blushing ripe on the end of the bough ? 

Hymenceon ! 



76 SAPPHO AND PHAOIST 

Ripe now, but ye may not reach, 
For the bride is won, and the groom is strong. 
Keila, O Charles s a ! 

[Exeunt.] 

ALC^EUS 
Lady of violets and reverie, 
Sappho — I long to speak, but shame restrains me. 

SAPPHO 
Alcaeus, had your thoughts been beautiful, 
Nor any double-speech upon your tongue, 
Shame would not turn away your eyes from mine ; 
You would have spoken simply to me now. 

ALC^US 

It is not simple to say beautifully 
What I would say. — Hast thou, in Mitylene, 
Watched the young market-maidens weaving fillets 
Of wild flowers ? Know you what men say 'tis sign of ? 

SAPPHO 

Is it a sign ? 

ALCEUS 
That all such are in love. 
Truly they are but country maids, and yet 
Persephone herself was such a girl 
Weaving her wild-flowers when dark Pluto plucked her. 
Lady, you too are weaving : may I ask 
For whom ? 



Sappho 



THE TRAGEDY 

SAPPHO 

[Holding out the fillet. ~\ 

And if I answered — for Alcaeus ? 

ALC^US 
[Ardent. ] 



77 



SAPPHO 
[ Withholding the fillet, ,] 
And if I gave this — to another ! 
[Stooping, she lifts a fragment of the broken vase and reads .] 
" Within this vase thy lover's lips have vowed" — 
The vow itself is cracked : how came it broken ? 

ALCjEUS 
[Bitterly, .] 
Atthis hath told thee ! 

SAPPHO 

Anactoria 
Is dear to me. 

ALC^US 
But she should understand : 
I loved her, and I love her now no more. 
Well, if for this she weeps, let her revile 
The god, not me. — Can I constrain a god ? 
Tether him ? Clip his wings ? Say 'come' or 'go' ? 
Love is a voyager, and like the wind 
That shakes awhile the summer woods with music 
Moves on, to stir the hearts of unknown bowers. 



78 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

SAPPHO 

O love in man ! How then in woman ? What 

If Anactoria had scorned Alcaeus ? 

Is there a god and eke a goddess Love : 

The one all vagrant, lawless, unrestrained, 

Self-seeking ardour ? The other — all compassion'd 

Submissive constancy ? How would it fare 

With us, Alcaeus, had you won my love 

And I should prove untrue ? 

\From the right, Anactoria enters and rejoins Atthis at the 
steps of the shrine. There, while Atthis seeks gently to 
distract her, she keeps her eyes fixed i?i passionate brood- 
ing upon Sappho and Alcozus. The latter is about to 
reply to Sappho, when she stays him with a smile and 
gesture^ 

It matters not 
Love is indeed goddess and god, and man 
And woman, and the world ! What shall it boot 
To argue with the shy anemone, 
Or reason with the rose ? — This air is spring, 
And on this isle of flowers we all are lovers. 



ALOEUS 

Ah, then you love me, Sappho ! 



SAPPHO 
ALC.EUS 

Even by this speech of thine. 



By what token ? 



THE TRAGEDY 79 

SAPPHO 

Eyes are the tongues 
Of lovers, and their speech is light, not sound, 
Therefore you know not Love's infallible 
Tokens. 

ALCEUS 

But tell me ! 

SAPPHO 

Grant it then — I love you : 

Then, were it so, what need had you to ask ? 

For should I see you but a little instant, 

Then is my voice choked and my tongue is broken ; 

Under my flesh quick fire runs flame and quivers ; 

My eyes look blank on darkness ; sounds of roaring 

Sing in mine ears ; chiller than death the frore dews 

Danken my limbs, and pale as grass in autumn, 

I tremble. 

[Smiling.'] 

Are the tokens manifest ? 

[From the temple reenters Phaon without his burden. As 
Sappho turns her face archly from Alcceus, her eyes fall 
upon the slave, who, oblivious, with dreamy gaze fixed 
upon the sea, approaches and passes her by, silent as a 
sleep-walker. Following his figure unconsciously with 
her look, Sappho — with rapid gradation changing in 
mood and aspect — begins to show visibly the tokens she 
has been describing, till overwhelming faintness closes 
her eyes.~\ 



80 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

ALQEUS 
Why do you mock me, lady ? Pain of hope, 
Pain of desire are punishment enough, 
Without your irony. — Gods, thou art pale ! 
What is it, Sappho? Ha! thou hast not mocked me! 
You tremble : Nay, poor fool, me — happy fool ! 
Now, now I understand. 

SAPPHO 
{Faintly?^ 

Not now. 

ALC^EUS 

[With lowered voice. .] 

I know ; 

Eyes only speak, and yours are eloquent ; 

They follow yonder slave to where she stands 

Watching us there. — Her jealousy is mad ; 

Let it not move thee ; it can touch us not ; 

And what are we to Anactoria 

That — lean on me ! 

[He reaches to support Sappho, whose eyes have closed. 
Exit Phaoriy right.] 

SAPPHO 
Later — to-night. 



ALC^US 

But Sappho — 



THE TRAGEDY 8 1 

SAPPHO 

Under the stars to-night ; here, by the temple — 

[Slowly, looking away right.] 
When there are no slaves passing. 

ALC^US 
[Kissing her robe.] 

Till to-night ! 

\_IIe depa?'ts by the colonnade, exultant. Sappho stands silent, 
shaken by deep breaths of a great emotion. Anactoria, 
whose eyes have never left Sappho's face, seeing her now 
alone, leaves Atthis who seeks fearfully to detain her by 
catching at a lyre which Anactoria carries rigidly in her 
arm. ] 

ATTHIS 
Wait ; let me play to thee ! 

[Unheeding, Anactoria approaches Sappho and comes very 
close, before Sappho, opening her arms with a glad start, 
embraces her.] 

SAPPHO 

My Toria. 

[Allowing Sappho to draw her face close to hers, Anactoria 
speaks then in a tense, low voice. Before she has 
finished speaking, she springs loose, with a spurning 
gesture.] 

ANACTORIA 

Oh, that I were a beast on the wild hills, 
And I had borne thee to my twilight lair 
Alive, and there had bitten thee to death, 
And dabbled all thy beauty in the dew — 
And he to look upon it ! 



82 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

SAPPHO 
Toria ! 

ANACTORIA 
[Wildly. ~\ 
Oh, call me not that name ; it is too dear. 
So did you call me first that silver night 
Below your orchard, when you taught me first 
To strike this plectron on this lyre. — You kissed me 
And cried : " Well played, my 'Toria ! " 



SAPPHO 

And so 

I'll kiss thee, dear, a thousand silver nights. 



ANACTORIA 
[Holding the plectron like a daggeret.~\ 
Come not so close ; I'll scratch thy cheek with this, 
And stencil in thy blood Alcaeus' name, 
That all may read how Sappho loved her friend. 

SAPPHO 
[To Atthis.~\ 
And so for this she would she were a beast 
To dabble all my beauty in the dew ! 

[Turning to Anactoria with gentle laughter. - ] 
O girl ! 

ANACTORIA 

I heard you bid him come to-night. 



I said to-night 



THE TRAGEDY 83 

SAPPHO 
ANACTORIA 

Wilt thou deny it ? 



SAPPHO 



Let 



Alcaeus come to-night, then. I will be 

Punctual to his coming, and if thou 

Hast deemed me ever a wise art-mistress, trust me 

To teach him such a lesson then in love 

As he shall long remember — for thy sake. 

Come, wilt thou love thine old friend — one night more ? 

ANACTORIA 
[ Going to her and embracing her knees. ~\ 
O dear and mighty ! Thou art not as we. 

SAPPHO 

A goddess once again ? No cheeks, eyes, elbows 
To be restored ? Why, truly, then, these poets 
Are wise who sing : "Hail, Sappho, thou tenth Muse !" 
Therefore rise up, sweet mortal, and attend 
How I shall prove my Musehood by a song. 

\Taking the lyre from Anacto?'ia^\ 

Hand me the plectron. — Atthis, sit with us 
Here. 'Tis a Linus-song for vintagers 
To chant in autumn. Therefore, 'Toria, 
If thou wilt weep, weep not for Cupid, but 
Adonis. — Kiss me ! Now this will I sing 
Deftly to please my girl-friends. 



84 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

[Sappho is seated on the marble bench, right; Atthis on the 
ground before her. Anactoria, standing beside the 
bench, turns away while Sappho sings and, overcome 
with restrained weeping, steals off through the colonnade. 
Meantime, from the right, Pittacus has appeared and 
stands listening, unseen.] 

What shall we do, Cytherea ? 
Tender Adonis is dying ! 

What shall we do ? 
Rend, rend your delicate tunics, 
Rend, rend your breasts, O my maidens : 

Weep — Ai le nut 

[Looking after Anactoria.] 

Poor jealousy ! — Run, fetch her back to us, 
And take her this. 

ATTHIS 
[Taking the lyre from Sappho .] 

I fear she will not come. 
[Exit.'] 

PITTACUS 
[Approaches Sappho with hesitating deference.] 
Clear voice of Lesbos — 

SAPPHO 
[Turning.] 

Lord of Mitylene ! 



THE TRAGEDY 85 

PITTACUS 

Lady, in Athens, the last time I met 

Solon, the tyrant, he was in his garden, 

And where he sat the almond-blossoms fell 

On his white hair. He had thrown his parchments 

down 
And looked on me with eyes that saw me not, 
For near him stood a slender, thrush-voiced boy 
Gushing a song. And when the boy had ceased, 
"Whose song was that? " he asked. The boy said, 

" Sappho's : " 
And Solon, speaking low, said : " Sing that only ! 
So that I may not die before I learn it." 

SAPPHO 

Solon was wise ; my songs are beautiful. 

PITTACUS 

For they are you. Sappho, I also am 

Tyrant and lawgiver. My function 'tis 

In war and peace to engineer this isle, 

And through the level conduits of the mind 

To irrigate the state with the still waters 

Of reason ; I have schooled and flogged my will 

With the iron whips of Sparta ; and my words 

Are sown abroad for wisdom ; yet — O hear me ! 

Thy voice hath loosed in me a thousand streams 

That overleap their banks, and inundate 

My ordered world with passion ; vain it is 

I strive to dam those springs ; their foaming tides 



86 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

Burst into glorious laughter, and I drown 
Rapturous ; vain it is I charge my soul — 
This love is madness, peril and despair ! 
I know that it is madness — yet I love you. 

SAPPHO 

Are you, then, mad? Does not supreme desire 

Beget the supreme joy ? This engineered, 

Wise-ordered state of yours — when you have cast 

Its lovers forth on some bleak lepers' rock 

In the barren sea ; when you have builded all 

Its solemn temples of serenity, 

And sculptured on its gates your city's god — 

The massy image of Indifference ; 

When you have set up in the public ways 

Fountains of running reason, where cold virgins 

And silent boys, with philosophic beards, 

Fill their chaste pitchers, and turn dumbly home 

To tipple with their grandsires — tell me, then ! 

Will you not fear, some day, an insurrection, 

When those same boys and girls, with flying hair 

And eyes aflame, shall drag you in the market 

And cry : " Our lovers ! Give us back our lovers ! 

Give us our mad joys and our loves again ! " 

PITTACUS 

Sappho, the wild bees of Persuasion hive 
Between your lips. Call me what name you will : 
Sage — madman ; only take from me my gift 
In love. 



THE TRAGEDY 8? 



SAPPHO 
What do you offer ? 

PITTACUS 



Mitylene. 



SAPPHO 

As mine ? 

PITTACUS 

To rule with me. 

SAPPHO 

Is not such rather 
A man's, not woman's office ? 

PITTACUS 

Yours alone 
Of women ! See, a little while ago 
I brought this staff to you : you were in the temple, 
And here I met Alcseus ; here for you 
We wrangled, and in wrath I lifted this 
And left it — so. 

SAPPHO 
Heigh me ! A vase, a sceptre : 
And now both dashed in pieces at my feet ! 
Surely this Sappho is a stony image 
And not a maid, to shatter such love-tokens. 
You struck Alcaeus ? 

PITTACUS 

No, by chance the blow 
Fell on a passing slave. 



88 SAPPHO AND PHAON 



You said — a slave ? 



SAPPHO 

[Slowly.] 



PITTACUS 

A sea-drudge 
With drift-wood for Poseidon's 
Night-fire. 

SAPPHO 
[Breathing quick.'] 

Give me the pieces. 
His flesh, you say ? 

PITTACUS 

His flesh ? 
It did not strike Alcaeus ! 

SAPPHO 
[Feeling the staff's splintered edge.] 

No, but his bare flesh ! On 
His shoulder ? 



The slave. 



PITTACUS 

It struck only 

SAPPHO 
[ Quivering.] 
The bright blood started 



THE TRAGEDY 89 

PITTACUS 
There sprang no blood, dear lady ; the staff broke 
Against the fagots on the fellow's shoulder. — 
All for mere words ! Alcaeus had but gibed me 
With foolish words. Judge now if I have need 
Of you, to sway the staff of Mitylene. 

SAPPHO 
[After a brief pause. ,] 

True, Pittacus ; why should we not splice these 
In one, and wield this staff together ? Grant 
I'm but a slave, being but woman ; yet 
If you, that are the maker of your law, 
If you detect in me this civic gift 
Surpassing woman, shall you not then leap 
This breach of sex, and make me your true mate — 
Greatly your wife and lover ? 

PITTACUS 

Speak with pity ! 
Let me not doubt I hear this. 

SAPPHO 

Hear it well, 
For I would reason, too : A slave, I said, 
But — turn the tables ! You are now the slave 
(No maid as I, but such a bondman, say, 
As that same drift-wood bearer whom you struck), 
And I am maiden-tyrant of Mitylene, 
Over all Lesbos lawgiver of love. 



90 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

PITTACUS 
Even as thou art ! 

SAPPHO 

Why then, you poor base slave, 
If I detect in your sea-sinew'd limbs 
Olympian graces moving, if I see 
Far in your cold deep eyes daemonic fire 
Outburning the eye-glance of a faun in love, 
If I behold in you, outcast, my kin 
Congenial spirit, may I not reach to you 
My tyrant's staff, and raise you at my side — 
No more a thing for men to scorn, but now 
Greatly my lord and lover ? 

PITTACUS 

What would . . . ? 



Wait! 



SAPPHO 

Or must I now because I am a woman, 
Forego the tyrant's great prerogative — 
To make mine own law ? 



PITTACUS 

Sappho, but to what 
Leads this ? I do not follow you. 

SAPPHO 

It leads 
To the Golden Age. If you would get my love, 
Follow me there. 

[Turning away, Sappho springs to the steps of Aphrodite '.? 

shrine, ,] 



THE TRAGEDY 91 

PITTACUS 

Have you, then, only mocked me ? 
Am I to come no more ? 

SAPPHO 
[Pausing. ] 

Nay, Pittacus, 
I have but mocked myself. Come when you will. 

PITTACUS 

To-night ? Under these olives ? 

SAPPHO 

When you will ; 

And so, good-by ! Oh, you have given me thoughts 

To make the woman tremble in me. 

PITTACUS 

Sappho ! 

[ With a gesture of love toward her, as she turns again to the 
steps, he departs, left. Sappho, having mounted to the 
shrine, prostrates herself befo?-e it; then — facing the 
sEgean, seated, her arms about her knees, plastic, silent 
— gazes down upon the waves. From the colonnade 
Atthis enters and searches about with her eyes.] 

ATTHIS 
Where art thou, Sappho ? 

[Discovering her, Atthis ascends the steps.] 
Anactoria 
Is wilful, and she swears she will not come 
Again, till she has sought Alcseus out 



v 



92 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

And dragged him to thy scorn. — Thou hast not 

heard me. 
Sweet mistress, here is Atthis. What hath happened 
That like an image thou sittst staring ? 



She is calling me. 



SAPPHO 
[In a low voice.] 

ATTHIS 
Who calls ? 

SAPPHO 

ATTHIS 
[Starting.'] 



Hark! 



My mother. 



Sappho ! 



SAPPHO 
Dost thou not hear her sob and sing below us ? 
Her hollow lute is turquoise, and she touches 
The silver strings of ever-roaring reefs 
Far off to sound her awful lullaby ; 
And while she croons, between her foaming breasts — 
Like infants at their milk — Hyperion lies 
And heaving Triton dreams. Us too, us mortals, 
She suckles there, and there she buries us. 

ATTHIS 

What new hymn art thou musing ? 

SAPPHO 

Listen again ! 

Oh, such a sobbing cry did Thetis make 

That night she rose beside the blood-starr'd beach 



THE TRAGEDY 93 

Of Troy, to her great son Achilles, ere 
He died. Me, too, she calls : I sink, I sink ! 
Atthis, I have heard the whirling cliff-birds scream, 
And watched my breaths burst up through the green 

wave 
In moons of opal fire. 

ATTHIS 

I am afraid ; 
Is it some goddess calls thee ? 

SAPPHO 

Tis the sea, 
The teeming, terrible, maternal sea 
That spawned us all. She calls me back to her, 
But I will not go. Her womb hath brought me forth 
A child defiant. I will be free of her ! 
Her ways are birth, fecundity, and death, 
But mine are beauty and immortal love. 
Therefore I will be tyrant of myself — 
Mine own law will I be ! And I will make 
Creatures of mind and melody, whose forms 
Are wrought of loveliness without decay, 
And wild desire without satiety, 
And joy and aspiration without death ; 
And on the wings of those shall I, I, Sappho ! 
Still soar and sing above these cliffs of Lesbos, 
Even when ten thousand blooms of men and maids 
Are fallen and withered — there. 

[Peering below, she touches Atthis 1 arm. and points .] 

What man is that? 



94 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

ATTHIS 

Where ? 

SAPPHO 

There, beneath us, where the cliff-path leaves 
The beach. See, he is climbing toward our faces. 

ATTHIS 
I am dizzy. 

SAPPHO 

He is clinging to the rock 
Of garnet, where the sea-doves build their nests. 
He is reaching over it. — Atthis, he will fall ! 

ATTHIS 

I see him now — a fisherman : his net 
Is over his shoulder. 

SAPPHO 

He hath seized it, look — 
A young dove ! And he brings it in the net. 



ATTHIS 

A slave. 

SAPPHO 
Know you his name ? 



ATTHIS 

His name is Phaon. 



THE TRAGEDY 95 

SAPPHO 
\_Slowly.~\ 

Phaon ! And so 'tis Phaon ! and forever 
* Sappho and Phaon.' 

ATTHIS 

Dost thou muse again ? 

SAPPHO 

When lovers' names are born, their syllables 
Fall like the snowflakes of Apollo's tears, 
That crystallize in song. 

[Murmuring. ~] 

— Sappho and Phaon ! 

ATTHIS 

'Tis not a slave like others. You have heard 
What the old sea-wives whisper. 



SAPPHO 

No. 

ATTHIS 

Of him 
And Aphrodite ? 

SAPPHO 
\_Eagerly.~] 
Nay, what do they whisper ? 



96 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

ATTHIS 
They say that once, when Phaon was a boy, 
One twilight, when the ^Egean was uptorn 
By mighty wind and thunder, and the fish-folk 
Prayed in their harbours — at the tempest's height, 
Appeared upon the beach an old, poor woman 
And begged a passage to the mainland. None 
Heard her but scoffed or cursed her ; only Phaon 
Unloosed his boat, and rowed her through the storm 
To Lydia. At dawn, when he returned, 
His look was altered and he spoke strange things ; 
How, when his boat reached mainland, the poor hag 
Had cast her cloak and sprung, with burning limbs, 
Upon the sands — a goddess ! Since which night 
(They say) he hath grown up indifferent 
To all his kith and kind ; to laughter, love, 
And slave-girls singing. — 'Tis a pretty tale ; 
Wouldst thou not love to make a song of it? 

SAPPHO 
In truth, my Atthis, 'tis a moving tale, 
And I should love to make a song of it. 
Leave me ! 

ATTHIS 

Wilt thou compose it on the spot ? 
Nay, then I'll go for news of Larichus. 

\_Atthis departs toward Mitylene. Sappho, left alone, 
descends from the shrine and leans against one of the 
temple pillars. From the cliffpath, Phaon enters. 
About him is flung a sea-net, under the hanging folds 
of which he holds in his hands, enmeshed, a white dove. 



THE TRAGEDY 97 

Seeing him, Sappho withdraws into the temple through 
the tapestries, fro?n between which she soon looks forth 
again. Slowly Phaon descends the broad steps and, 
sitting upon the last, extricates the dove from the net. 
As he rises with it in his hand a?td goes toward the 
altar of Poseidon, Sappho — unseen of him — comes 
from the temple and descends the steps behind him. 
Having reached the altar, Phaon is about to lift a knife 
which lies upon it, when Sappho stays his arm. Seeing 
her, he bends low in a subjected manner.] 

SAPPHO 
The dove : what wouldst thou with the wild thing ? 



Kill it. 



PHAON 
\_Serenely.~] 

SAPPHO 
It struggles. See, is not it beautiful ? 

PHAON 

I know not ; you have spoken. 



SAPPHO 

But for whom 
Wilt thou then kill it, bondman ? 



PHAON 

For Poseidon ; 
The god is angry. 

H 



98 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

SAPPHO 
Oh, not for Poseidon ! 
His sacrifice is death ; to Aphrodite 
Give it ! For her the sacrifice is life- 
Give it to me and I will dedicate it 
Alive to Aphrodite, for it is 
Her sacred bird. Look, I will give thee this — 
My bracelet — for the dove. 

PHAON 

[Taking, as at a command, Sappho' 's bracelet, releases the 

dove into her hands.~\ 

'Tis yours. 

SAPPHO 

Her shrine 
Is yonder. I will loose it to her there. 

[Starting for the shrine, Sappho treads upon the net, which 
Phaon before has let fall beside the steps. Pausing, she 
looks back at him, where he stands intent upon the 
gleaming bracelet in his hand. For a moment she con- 
tinues to look at Phaon thus, then, wrapping the dove in 
her filmy scarf, and placing it with her flowers on the 
steps, she lifts the net where it lies."] 

Thy net is torn. 

PHAON 
I climbed here from the beach. 
It caught on the cliff-rocks. 

SAPPHO 

I will mend it. 



THE TRAGEDY 99 

PHAON 

[For the first time gazing at her.] 

You! 

[Fastening one end of the net — somewhat more tha?i 
shoulder-high — to the tripod on the altar, Sappho 
secures the other e?id to the bronze caryatid, right. Thus 
{the net cutting the foreground obliquely from the?niddle) 
her face is separated from Phaon's by the interlaced 
strands, some of which — hanging torn — leave gaps in 
the fibre '.] 

SAPPHO 
To mend is woman's task. 

PHAON 
[In wonder. ~\ 

Are you a woman ? 

SAPPHO 

Perhaps I am what women yearn to be : 
Man. 

PHAON 

Did you grow here in the temple ? 



SAPPHO 



I grew, or in what garden by the spray 
Or wave-lit cave my spirit's seed was sown, 
Surely 'tis thou who knowest : for methinks 
Thou also grewest there. 

LOFa 



Where 



IOO SAPPHO AND PHAON 

PHAON 

It may be so. 

SAPPHO 

Stood we not then as now ? and raised as now 
The net between us ? 

PHAON 
[Strangely.'] 
Somewhat I remember. 

SAPPHO 

And even as now thine eyes shone through the meshes, 
And mine in thine : was it not always so ? 

PHAON 
[Indifferent, begins to tie strands of the net.] 
Tis broken. 

SAPPHO 
Ah, but shall be mended ! I 
Will tie the fibres. 

[In silence now for a little, they stand mending the net: 

Phaon before it, dumbly engrossed in his task ; Sappho, 

frojn behind, thrusting at times her white hand or arm 

through a gap to reach for a strand, and keeping her 

eyes burningly intent upon Phaon.~] 

You are a boatman. 



PHAON 

Yes. 



THE TRAGEDY IO i 

i 

SAPPHO 

Go you alone upon the water ? 

PHAON 

Yes. 

SAPPHO 
When you are all alone, are you afraid ? 

PHAON 

No. 

SAPPHO 

Put you ever far to sea ? 

PHAON 

Sometimes. 

SAPPHO 
And have you never rowed to the mainland ? 

PHAON 

Oft. 

SAPPHO 
By tempest ? 

PHAON 



Once. 



SAPPHO 

A storm at twilight ? 

PHAON 

Once. 



102 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

SAPPHO 
Oh, is it true, then, what the sea-wives tell ? 
Was she a goddess ? 

PHAON 

Long ago ! 'twas long 
Ago. I was a boy, and that's all dark. 

SAPPHO 
And have you never seen her since she sprang 
Burning, upon the sands of Lydia ? 

PHAON 
[Momentarily ardent^ 
Sometimes methought — I know not. 



SAPPHO 

You saw. 

PHAON 

How knowest thou? 



Still you dreamed 



SAPPHO 

Tell me your dreams. 

[After a pause, Phaon — with a rapt smile — speaks. 
While he does so, Sappho — who has unwittingly tied 
his left 7vrist in one of the meshes where his hand rests 
— comes round to the other side of the net, and draws 
near to him.] 



THE TRAGEDY 103 

PHAON 

Oft ere the day, while all the slaves are sleeping, 
I and my boat put out on the black water ; 
Under us there and over us, the stars sing 

Songs of that silence. 
Soon then the sullen, brazen-horned oxen 
Rise in the east, and slowly with their wind-ploughs 
Break in the acres of the broad ^Egean 

Furrows of fire. 
So, many a time there, as I leaned to watch them 
Yoked in their glory, sudden 'gainst the sunrise 
Seemed that there stood a maiden — a bright shadow — 

SAPPHO 
Ah, you beheld her ! 

[Prom the colonnade, behind the farthest pillar, Alcceus and 
Anactoria enter and pause. Anactoria, nearly con- 
cealed by the pillar, points out to Alcceus the figures {on 
the opposite side of the net) of Phaon and Sappho, 
where, standing together, they are visible through the 
meshes. Alcceus' face darkens. Sappho, not seeing 
them, speaks in a low, impassioned voice to Phaon.] 

Look in my face. What were her features like — 
Hers, that bright shadow ? 

PHAON 

I am tangled ; you 
Have tied me in the mesh. 



SAPPHO 

I tied you ? 



104 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

PHAON 

Here — 
My wrist. 

SAPPHO 

Did I do this ? 

PHAON 

You see — the noose. 

SAPPHO 

But did you feel me tie this ? 

PHAON 

No. 

SAPPHO 
[Murmurs.] 

'Twas she ! 
Your hand is fast ; know you who made it fast ? 
'Twas she: her fingers drew these knots. 

PHAON 

Untie them. 

\_Alcceus, darkly, and Anactoria, radiant, withdraw 

unseen?^ 

SAPPHO 
Nay, but who knows what wise, unconscious plot 
Her deft, strange fingers wove to trap thee ? Thou 
Perchance hast trespassed here too near her shrine, 
And, having stranded thee in thine own net, 
She now is loath to toss thee back again 
In the sea, to thy dumb mermen. 



THE TRAGEDY 105 

PHAON 
[ Working with his right hand.] 

They are fine, 
These knots. 

SAPPHO 

And so perchance, for chastisement, 

She hath contrived this noose to keep thee here 

In speech with her, till thou shalt call to mind 

The face, and name the name, of her you love. 

PHAON 

I mind it well — her face. Unloose me. 

SAPPHO 

Look! 
Is it a dream-face still ? — A shadow ? 

PHAON 

No; 
'Tis with me days and nights. It is familiar. 

SAPPHO 

And yours to her familiar as these nights 
And days — and yet as worshipful and strange. 

PHAON 

\_Fascinated.~\ 
Untie me. 

SAPPHO 

First, her name ! You may not slip 
Her noose, till you have guessed the name of her 
You love. 



106 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

PHAON 
I know it well. 

SAPPHO 
\Smiling,~\ 

Methinks you boast 
To seem more skilled than she in guessing yours. 
How call you her ? 

PHAON 

Thalassa. 

SAPPHO 
[After a pause. ~\ 

What is that ? 



Her name. 



PHAON 
SAPPHO 

What's she ? 



PHAON 

A slave. 



SAPPHO 

And what is she 



To you? 



PHAON 

She's mine ; maketh my fire. 



SAPPHO 

Ah! 



THE TRAGEDY 1 07 

PHAON 



Loose me. 



SAPPHO 

You do not dwell alone, then ? 



PHAON 

No. 

SAPPHO 

You are wed ? 

PHAON 

We are slaves ; slaves are not wed. 

SAPPHO 

No ; but you love her. 

PHAON 

Yes ; children have I got with her ; the bairn 
Is stricken of the fever. 

SAPPHO 
\_Seizing the knife, cuts the meshes of the net.] 

Go ; you are free. 
[Phaon goes, silent.] 
Stay ; I have cut your wrist. 



PHAON 

A scratch. 

SAPPHO 

It bleeds. 



108 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

PHAON 
The bairn is sick and I must sacrifice 
A young dove to our lord Poseidon. Soon 
Its mother will be here, to pray with me 
For the babe's life. 

SAPPHO 

Where is its mother now ? 



PHAON 

She is gone up to the city, to the house 
Of Sappho — the great lady. 



SAPPHO 

Oh, of Sappho ! 
What does she there ? 



PHAON 

She is gone to the slave-quarters 
With crawfish and sea-tortoise for a feast. 
Methinks the lady's brother shall be wed 
To-morrow. 

SAPPHO 
She is gone to the slave-quarters. — 
Let see thy wrist. — The house of Sappho is 
A slave's house. — Ah, the blood ! 
[ Tearing a shred from her garment, she binds his wristJ] 

I, too, have heard 
Of Sappho — the great slave. 



THE TRAGEDY 109 

PHAON 

Nay, 'tis a noble 

Maiden of Lesbos. At Apollo's feast 

Once, in the crowd, I saw her fillet pass 

Above the virgins' heads into the palace, 

And all the people shouted : Io Sappho ! 

SAPPHO 
Believe it not ; the people were deceived. 
I know her well and she was born in chains — 
A weak and wretched fellow-slave of thine, 
Whose proudest joy were but to bind the hurt 
Which she hath given thee, even as I do now. 
Dost thou not hear me? Whereon dost thou gaze ? 



She is coming. 



PHAON 
[Looking off, left.~\ 

SAPPHO 
Phaon ! Phaon ! 



PHAON 

\For the first time turning upon her a wild unconscious 

look of love, grasps his bound wrist tightly. ~\ 

Ah ! it pains. 

[Enter Thalassa, bearing a willow basket of strange design. 
She is dishevelled with seaweed and her long, fair hair, 
tinged with the green of salt ooze, has partly slipped its 
fillet of vari-coloured shells. She moves impassively to 
Phaon, a?id speaks in a low ?nonotone.~\ 



110 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

THALASSA 

The day's dead ; the moon's with child ; 
The tide's full. I saw far out 
A shark's fin. — Poseidon calls. 
Hast killed it ? 

PHAON 

[Pointing toward SapphoJ] 

She bade me not. 

THALASSA 

[Turning to Sappho, who shrinks from her behind the 7iet, 

bows herself low in obeisance .] 

What Sappho forbiddeth thee 
The sea-god hath bidden thee. — 
The babe shall have sacrifice. 

PHAON 
\_Looking at Sappho, with a rush of thought^ 
' What, Sappho ' — ! 

THALASSA 

The sea-dove — where 
Didst hide it ? 

PHAON 
'Tis there. 
\As Thalassa goes toward the steps.~] 
'Tis hers. 
She bought it ; this bracelet gave 
To save its life. 



THE TRAGEDY III 

THALASSA 

Give it me. 

'[Taking the bracelet from Phaon, she holds it against the 
sunset, turning and turning it in the light.] 

PHAON 
[Standing at a distance.] 
And are you Sappho ? Yet did speak my name, 
And bind my wrist, and call yourself a slave ! 

SAPPHO 
And art thou Phaon ? Phaon for whom the stars 
Sang, and the brazen-horned oxen ploughed 
The acres of the sunrise ? Yet thou lovest — this ? 

PHAON 

You said : " I know her well, and she was born 

In chains — a fellow-slave ! " What did you mean ? 



Thalassa ! 



SAPPHO 
[Gazing, curious and incredulous.] 



THALASSA 
[Slipping the bracelet over her arm^\ 

It shineth fine : 
See, Phaon ! 

SAPPHO 

Thalassa, where's 
Thy home ? 



112 SAPPHO AND PHAOJV 



Together. 
Thy lover ? 



THALASSA 

On the beach we sleep 

SAPPHO 

What dost thou for 



THALASSA 
For him I keep 
Food, fire, and the babe and boy. 

SAPPHO 
And what wilt thou do to make 
His labour and name to grow 
Magnificent over the isles ? 

THALASSA 
[Returns Sappho' 's enkindled gaze with proud serenity .] 
More bairns will I bear to him. 

SAPPHO 

And they — when the frost of death 
Hath gathered both thee and him — 
Shall they too but live — to live ? 
Be born still to bear again 
Procreative things that die ? 

PHAON 

[Having listened, vaguely fearful, moves now between the two 

women, and draws Thalassa, protectingly.~\ 

Cease, cease ! — Thalassa, come with me. Her eyes ! 
They burn us through the net. O come away ! 



THE TRAGEDY 113 

THALASSA 

\_As she goes with Phaon, raises her arm with the bracelet, 
for Sappho to see.~\ 

This gold will I give the bairn 

To play with. — Keep thou the dove. 

PHAON 

[ With a gesture of yeaj'ning toward Sappho, departs in the 
falling twilight t his voice broken with pain.~\ 

Thalassa ! 

[Sappho, through the net, watching them together till they 
disappear, seizes then the 7iet before her and, tearing it 
down, rends once the meshes with her hands.] 

SAPPHO 

Aphrodite ! Aphrodite ! 
Now, now thy net is torn, thy bird is free. 

[Springing to the steps, she lifts the sea-dove and unwinds 
from about it the filmy scarf] 

darling bird, which art my beating soul, 
That Phaon captured on these wild sea-cliffs, 
Mount up, mount up ! and nestle with thy wings 
Against the burning chlamys of heaven's queen 
There where her breast heaves highest. — Say to her : 
" Lady of love, almighty ! This is Sappho — 
Her spirit — whom thou madest of that fire 
Which sleeps in Phaon's eyes. Lo, I am his, 
And I will make him mine !" — This say to her, 
My heart's bird, and beseech her, if she hears 



114 SAPPHO AND PHAOJV 

My prayer, and sanctioneth my passionate 
Resolve, that she will speed thee back to me 
In token she approves. — Yet should she not, 
Here do I choose, in spite of sea and heaven, 
The sanction of myself. 

[Releasing the sea-dove.'] 

Good-by, sweet bird ! 

\_On the steps, from her uplifted hand, she looses the bird, 
which takes wing into the sunset. Immediately Sappho 
springs up the steps and goes to the cliff's edge. There, 
standing against the subdued reflections of the /Egean, 
she follows the dove' s far flight zvith her eyes.'] 

\Rising, the Herculaneum curtain shuts off the scene.] 



Here follows the Pantomime of the First Interlude. 
Vide Appendix. 






ACT II 



ACT II 

Early night of the same day. The temple and sea gleam 
vaguely under the moon. Tapers are burning beneath 
the outstretched stone wings of the dove on Aphro- 
dite's shrine, and the urn of Poseidon glows with 
fire — a signal light to marifiers. Swinging lamps 
twinkle in the olive grove. On the edge of the grove, 
alone, stands Pittacus in reverie. From all sides out 
of the night, arise the soft string- sounds of sweet ifistru- 
ments and the music of far laughter. In the near 
distance {from the left) the voice of Alcceus sings. 

ALCEUS 
Wine, dear child, and truth 

And youth and these lips of thine ! 
Wine from the crocus' cup 

And truth from the poppy's heart 

Drink to me 
While I think of thee ! 
Think of me 
While I drink, drink 

Wine and youth 
And truth from these lips of thine. 

PITTACUS 

[Coming slowly down the steps."] 

Tis silent now — that song; but still the silver shores 

Are drench'd with dews of it ; the olive groves — the 

air, 

117 



Il8 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

The ever-rhythmic waters — are in love. Of all 

I only and the white stars are not amorous. 

No more the wine of thee, dear child : the truth I 

drink ! 
And drinking that, I pass from madness into peace : 
Peace now, yet should I look once more into her eyes, 
What then ? 

[Enter from the grove a Figure, clad in the cloak of a Greek 
soldier, weaiing a helmet with long horse-hair plume, 
a gold breastplate, and greaves of gold. ,] 



THE FIGURE 
[Approaching Pittacus.~\ 
1 Under these olives,' lord of Mitylene ! 

PITTACUS 
[Starting.'] 
Her brother, Larichus. 

[Turning toward the Figure, pauses bewildered.'] 

Not Sappho — you! 

SAPPHO 

' Under these olives ' — was it not the place ? 
Well met, O Pittacus ! 

PITTACUS 

In such a garb — 



THE TRAGEDY 1 19 

SAPPHO 

The wise Athene walked at Ilium 
Among the tetchy Greeks. The arbiter 
Of men needs govern as a man. — Where is 
Your tyrant's staff ? 



PITTACUS 

[Drawing back.~\ 

Keep from me, lest again 
I lose the tranquil planet of my peace. 
Let me depart from you. 

SAPPHO 

/ will depart 
When you have given me what I come to claim. 

PITTACUS 

All but my quiet soul. 

SAPPHO 

That girdle of keys. 

PITTACUS 
\_Feeli?ig at his side.~\ 
They are the city keys. 



120 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

SAPPHO 

Which one of them 
Unlocks the yoke-rings of the public slaves ? 

[Pittacus loosens one.] 
Give me that one. 

[Reaching, snatches it from him with a glad sigh."] 
Now keep your quiet soul, 
Philosopher : I will no more affray 
Your sleep with my alarms. 

[She turns, and is leaving!] 

PITTACUS 
[Unmanned by her presence!] 

Yet do not go ! 

SAPPHO 
Peace ! You have put away with me the quest 
Of happiness. Yours is the living pall, 
The aloof and frozen place of listeners 
And lookers-on at life. But mine — ah ! mine 
The fount of life itself, the burning spring 
Pierian ! — I pity you. Farewell ! 

[Exit, left.] 

PITTACUS 
Farewell, thou burning one and beautiful ! 
I pity thee, for thou must live to quench 
With thine own tears thine elemental fire. 
[Enter Phaon, right!] 



THE TRAGEDY 121 

PHAON 
[Groping toward the altar, moans low.~] 

Poseidon ! O Poseidon ! 

PITTACUS 

Still this slave 
That rises in my path to baffle me ! 

PHAON 

Ah — ah, Poseidon ! 

PITTACUS 
\_Drawing near.] 
Slave ! 

PHAON 
[Pausing, speaks confidingly.] 

Are you the god ? 

PITTACUS 
[Half bitterly.] 

The god ! I have deserved thy question, slave. 
Before, thy silence stung me — now thy words. 

PHAON 

Lord, lift it from me ; take it from my eyes ! 
Why have you cast its dimness over me ? 

PITTACUS 
What wouldst thou have me lift ? 



122 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

PHAON 

It closes down. 

Stretch forth your arm and draw it back to you. 

PITTACUS 

Look near : canst thou not see me ? 



PHAON 

None I see ! 
The shore is gone ! It shutteth out the stars, 
Thicker and colder ! 



PITTACUS 

What ? 



PHAON 

The fog ! The fog ! 
It shuts between us, and her far white face 
Wanes toward me like the lady in the moon, 
And now between the meshes I can see, 
Like shrines, her two eyes burning. 



PITTACUS 

Even this one ! 
Is there none then too low ? no piece of clay 
But passion there will make its chrysalis 
And kindle the worm wings ? Rest, thou poor churl ! 

\Exit slowly, right] 



THE TRAGEDY 123 

PHAON 

[Descending the steps supplicatingly.~\ 

Lord, be not angry ! Take it from before 
My face, and show me hers ! Sweep it away, 
And with your great hand show again the stars. 

\_Enter from the grove Thalassa. Slung at her back, is a 
swaddled babe. At her side is a little boy of some four 
or five years — his sturdy, sun-tanned body naked, save 
for wreathings of sea-weed and kelp, partly concealing 
his torse and intertangling the oozy locks of his long 
hair. The child carries a tortoise 1 shell, with which — 
sitting upon the ground — he plays. Pausing at the 
top of the steps, Thalassa unbinds the infant from her 
back and takes it in her arms.~\ 

THALASSA 

Io, my bairn ! wakest thou ? 
Aye drowseth thy bonny head 
Low ! burneth thy little cheek 
That erst it was cold as ice. 
Io, my bairn ! droop thee not 
Away from thy mother's eyes ; 
Look up in them. 

[Descending the steps, Thalassa reaches the swaddled child 
toward Phaon, who stands by the altar, his face from 
hers, oblivious — staring ahead of 'him .] 

Phaon, take 
The bairn to thee : might it smile 
To lie in its father's arm 
And feel it strong. — Phaon ! 



124 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

[Turning about vaguely toward her, Phaon takes the out- 
reached burden in his arms and holds it, rigid. Thalassa 
then, bending over, takes fro?n her arm Sappho's bracelet 
and holds it dangling over the infant.'] 

So! 
Now shall my bairnling look up and see what the 

Lady of Lesbos 
Hath given its father — a little gold dolphin instead 

of the sea-dove 
For bairnling to hold in its fingers and play with and 

make it grow strong. Look ! 
Its eyes are the green little stones that burn in the 

shallows at low-tide, 
And it bringeth a pearl in its mouth to please thee; 

aha ! glint thine eye now 
And look where the scales of it shine and shine in my 

bairnling's moon-beam, 
And it hath a slippery silvery tail like a sea-maiden's. 

[Bending over closer^] 
Phaon ! 

It waketh not. Speak to it once ! It sleepeth aye 

as in fire. 

[Snatching the babe from Phaon } s arm and nestling it, pas- 
sionate, she drops the bracelet on the ground.] 

A curse on the bright dark Lady of Lesbos ! A curse 

on her shining 
Arm-ring ! Ah, naught it availeth the fever. Go ! 

Go and seek thou 
A victim and kill it. The wave-god is angry ! worse 

is the bairn. — Go ! 



THE TRAGEDY 125 

But seek first the house of Sappho and give her the 
gold thing back. — Go ! 

[Phaon moves a dazed step, then remains motionless. Turn- 
i?ig away, Thalassa, her face bent near to the babe in 
her arms, goes slowly up the steps. ] 

Io, my bairn ! Come away. 

Now under the holy beam 

Thy mother will pray for thee 

That soon thou shalt wake and smile. 

Io, my bairn ! droop thee not 

Away from thy mother's heart. 

[She passes into the temple. The little boy is about to follow, 
but, seeing the bracelet at Phaon 's feet, he runs back, and 
lifts it in his hand to his father.] 

THE CHILD 

Babbo ! 

PHAON 

Thy voice it is ! Bion, thy face ! 
Methought it had been hers till thy young eyes 
Shone through her misty hair : and now that mist 
Fades in the moon away. 

[Smiling at the child, he sits on the altar slej>s and takes him 

in his arms.] 

How creptst thou here, 
Sand-snail ? Aye stickest to thy Babbo's side 
Like a spar of drift-wood. Ever at evening 
When roweth Babbo weary to the beach, 
Thou springest from the kelp, climbest his knees, 



126 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

Showest thy day's sport. Tighter, tighter, bairn, 

Thine arms about me ! Keep thy father fast. — 

Thou little piece of me, grow not so tall ! 

Taller than the iris-reeds that water-maids 

Make into pipes for Pan to play upon. 

Soon too shalt thou be ripe for him to play. 

Nay, whither now ? What new sport bringest here 

To show me ? — Tortoise ! A young turtle's shell : 

And was thine own catch ? Flung him on the 

back ! 
Brave kill ! — What shineth in thy fingers there ? 
Show me what 'tis. 

[The Child lifts to him again the dolphin-bracelet of Sappho. 
Phaon, staring at it, starts to his feet with his former 
gesture of passionate groping.] 

Poseidon ! Ah, Poseidon ! 
Once more, once more, why blurrest thou the 

world ! 
Lift it away ! Thy mist is over all. 
Show me the path to her. 

[ With wondering eyes, the Child takes Phaon' 's ha?id as if to 

lead.] 

'Tis bitter cold, 

And is thy hand so small and warm ? Lead on — 

[Slowly the Child leads his father up the steps toivard the 
colonnade^ 

'Tis ticklish walking on the wet weed-slime 

And naught but cloud to lean on — Lead the 

way. 
Her house is yonder where the breakers are. 



THE TRAGEDY 127 

[Reentering with the infant from the temple, Thalassa steps 
forward between the first and second pilla7s. There, 
taking the bracelet from the boy's hand, she draws him 
with her away from his father and returns to the 
temple door.~\ 

THALASSA 

This gold will I give to her 
Back. Go thou to Sappho's gate 
And ask of what hour to-night 
She cometh to the temple. We 
Shall wait thee here. Come to us ! 

[She goes into the temple with the children. Phaon — his 
face lifted, his hand feeling before him — passes slowly 
off through the colonnade.~\ 

PHAON 
Poseidon, — thy hand again ! 

[Exit.'] 
[The voice of Alcceus calls outside in the olive-grove .] 

ALC/EUS 

Boy ! — Iacchus ! — Boy ! 

[Enter Alcceus, accompanied by an Ethiopian slave boy, 
and followed by Sappho, disguised as before, now 
carrying a spear. Alcceus, wreathed with grape leaves, 
is adorned fantastically as a Bacchanalian. The slave, 
likewise draped with vines, bears upon his head and 
shoulders a bulging wine-sack made of a skin. This 
{sinking upon one knee) he supports thus as upon a 
salver at Alcceus* side, and lifts to him, from beneath it, 
a shallow, black-figured drinking cup. ] 



128 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

ALC^US 
Here, here, thou sack-stool ! Down, 
And hold the pigskin for the bridegroom. Wait ! 

[Addressing the cloaked figure of Sappho.] 
Hail, Larichus ! hail, bridegroom home again ! 
To Dionysus I thy welcome pour. — 

The cup ! — 

[Filling it from the sack.'] 

I charge thee, bird from Lydia, 

When Atthis keeps thy house in Lesbos, plant 

No other tree before the vine ! And so 

Sleep long and make your nest in grape-leaves. 

Drink ! 

And so for song : 

[Singing.] 

Wine, dear child, and truth 

And youth and these lips — 

SAPPHO 
[Turning from the cup.] 
No wine for me. 

ALC^EUS 
No bride for Larichus ! 
For what is love but grape-juice ? brides, but grapes ? 
And lovers — wine-skins ! Look you on this sack 
My caryatid here is holding — This 
Whilome was pig and grunted in the bog 
For water-nuts and mire : a sow's first-born 
With bristles, Hyacinthus of the herd ! 

[Pouring from the sack and drinking.] 



THE TRAGEDY 129 

Behold him now — a vessel for us gods, 
Swelling with Cyprian nectar. O translation ! 
Yet such a pig was Pittacus, who now 
Swelleth with love of Sappho. — 

[Drinking.'] 

Nay, but we — 
Before we fell in love, were we not swine 
Compared to this we are ? 

\_Patting the wine-sack."] 

I say, for one, 
The Arcadians crunched acorns and no slander 
To them ; and as for me — 

[Singing.] 

Ajax was a king, not I ! 

1 fell by the kiss of the Cyprus-born — 

And though Hebrus be the most plentiful of rivers 
yet 'tis said : from nothing, 

[Inverting his empty cup.] 

nothing cometh. More, boy ! 

SAPPHO 

Where's Atthis ? 

ALC^US 

Where's thy sister ? Where's the song-dove ? 
Where's Sappho ? 

SAPPHO 
[Starting.] 
You've not answered me. 



130 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

ALCiEUS 

All's one ! 

I say, there lives a kind of four-wing'd Muse, 
Quadruple-eyed and double-filleted, 
Called indiscriminately Sappho — Atthis; 
Find one, find both ; for they be always arm 
And neck together. Nay, but Larichus, 
Patience and wait! As I am drunk, henceforth 
I am thy brother : Sappho loveth me. 

SAPPHO 
Since when ? 

ALCEUS 
By Heracles, I know not : here 
To-day upon this ground, she swooned all pale 
Because another loved me ; and she bade 
Me meet her here to-night. — Good lad, thy hand 
And blessing ! 

\_Sappho draws slightly away.~\ 
What! 

SAPPHO 

I wish you joy of her. 

ALCEUS 
And not thy hand upon it ? 

SAPPHO 

To be honest, 
I cannot deem you happy. 



THE TRAGEDY 131 

ALC^US 

With thy sister ! 



SAPPHO 

These sisters are not all they seem to be. 

ALC^US 

But Sappho ! 

SAPPHO 

I perhaps know her too well. 

ALC^US 

And doubt she loves me ? 

SAPPHO 

Nay, far otherwise. 
I doubt if ever she saw form of man, 
Or maiden either, whom — being beautiful — 
She hath not loved. 

ALC^US 

But not with passion — 



SAPPHO 

All 
That breathes to her is passion ; love itself 

All-passionate. 



132 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

ALC^EUS 

Thou goadest me with thorns. — 
This evening — Nay, why should I tell thee this? 
And yet I will : — At sunset, here I saw 
Thy sister speaking with a public slave. 



Ah! 



SAPPHO 
[ Withdrawing?^ 



ALC^US 

If I thought — but I will tell thee more. 
Here hung a net suspended, and they stood 
Together, speaking low — I watched them yonder. 
The slave was mending. Somehow he had got 
One of his hands entangled in the mesh, 
And she — I could not plainly watch her through 
The net — methought she peered into his face. 



Ah! 

So I left them. 



SAPPHO 



ALC^US 



No more ? 



SAPPHO 

Did you stay to see 



ALC^US 
There was one with me. 



THE TRAGEDY 1 33 

SAPPHO 

[Quickly. ,] 

Who? 

ALC^US 

No matter. 
But him — that slave ! Sappho to speak with him 
On the temple steps ! — The thought hath maddened 

me. 
Why art thou silent ? Dost thou deem it nothing 
That she should stoop to him ? 



SAPPHO 

She could not stoop 
To him. 

PJJZMVS 

By heaven ! I'd have his vermin heart 
Upon a spit and roast it — were it so ; 
But I am drunk to think it. — Boy, I pray you 
When next you meet your sister, say no word 
Of what I saw ; but tactfully you might 
Whisper some praises of me. Wait a little, 
I'll run and find her. 

\_To the wine- slave .] 

Come ! 

[ Calling back.~\ 

And Atthis too ! 
I'll tell her thou art waiting here to clasp 
Her neck with Lydian pearls. Ho bride and groom ! 



134 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

[Nabbing the slave-boy by the ear, he departs with him, 

singing. ~\ 

Fetch me a Teian 

Goblet of gold ! 
Life is a cubit, 

Love is a span. 
[Exit.~\ 

SAPPHO 
[After a pause.~\ 
Soon shall the moon on the waters 
Sleep, and the Pleiades ; midnight 
Come and the darkness be empty, 
I in the silence — be waiting. 
Phaon ! Phaon ! — where must I 
Seek thee ? Send me thine omen ! 
[Remotely from the grove sounds the voice of Alcceus y 

singing.~\ 

ALC.EUS 
Love me, drink with me, bloom with me, die, love ! 

Garlands for me are thine. 
Mad when I am, share thou of my madness, 

Wise, be thou wise with me. 

[From between the temple- tapes tries appears Bion, the child. 
Running to the grove, he lifts from the ground a broken 
olive-bough, with lithe green shoots. These he strips of 
their leaves and twines, snake-like, roimd the main stem, 
which he flourishes blithely as a staff. Discovering then 
the tortoise-shell which lies ?iear the steps, he runs to 
pick it up^\ 



THE TRAGEDY 1 35 

SAPPHO 
[ Watching him.~\ 
At play — a luck-child ! Here's my happy omen. 

[Taking the shell, Bion is about to return to the temple, when, 
seeing the cloaked Figure, he pauses and stares.] 

SAPPHO 
Well, water-elf ? Upon what dolphin's back 
Or oily bladder rodest thou here to land? 
Why dost thou pierce me with those sea-blue eyes, 
As though they saw me in as guileless state 
As thy small body is? Dost thou perchance 
See through this manly corselet and suspect 
This strutting Menelaus, that he wears 
Within, a heart more coward-womanly 
Than Paris ? Stare not so, but answer me. 
Ah, now I know thou art a water-boy, 
For wave-sprites all are dumb to mortals, speak 
Only to mermaids and to weedy Triton, 
Their father. Come, what hast thou there ? 

[The boy holds out the tortoise-shell and as, taking it, Sappho 
sits upon the altar steps (at the right), the child comes 
and stands near.] 

A shell ! 

A turtle's house ! — and once upon a time — 

Sprite, wilt thou hear a story ? 

[The child nestles closed] 

Long ago 
There lived another turtle, and he died 
And left his shell-house empty by the waves, 



136 SAPPHO AND PHAOPT 

And there a goddess bore a little boy 

Named Hermes, and when he was four hours old 

He was as tall as thou art, 

[Playfully twitching his branch ofolive.~] 

Nay, methinks 
By thy caduceus, boy, thou shouldst be he> 
And I that goddess. — Play, then ! So he walked 
Beside the waves and found the empty shell, 
(Like this) and took a golden thorn — 

[ Taking from under the helmet a hair-pin of gold.'] 

like this, 
And turned and turned the thorn — like this — and 

bored 
Nine holes in either side, and drew through them 
Nine strings — 

[Lifting the lyre which Alcceus left behind on the ground.'] 
like these, and so he made the shell 
° [Striking the lyre.] 

like this, and sitting in the spray 
He sang with it a song — a song like this : — 

[Singing.] 
Hollow shell, horny shell, 

Wake from slumber. 
Long — too long — hast thou lain 
Deaf and silent. 

Where the pulse blooms in gold — 

Moon- and sun-rise — 
Thou didst creep slow and dumb, 

Seeing nothing. 



THE TRAGEDY 1 37 

Yet above thee gleamed and swung 

Star and swallow, 
And around thee, lost in song, 

Lovers mingled. 

Horny shell, hear'st thou not 

What I murmur? 
Wake ! my breath is on thee warm. 
Wake ! I touch thee. 
{Throwing away the lyre, Sappho starts up, and clasping 
the child close, speaks passionately '.] 

Ah, little Hermes, pray for me ! Thou only 
Whose dumb child-cry the immortals hearken, go 
And kneel to thy grandsire, the great Poseidon, 
And tell him thou didst meet with a bright being, 
Nor man nor woman, but a spirit both, 
That bade thee intercede for him — for her, 
That all the wild desire of this wild heart 
May be to-night fulfilled. Pray him, through you, 
To yield my love to me. Run, Hermes ! — run ! 

[The Child, with eyes of wonder, springs up the steps toward 
the temple. On the way, seeing the lyre lying where it 
has been thrown, he drops the tortoise-shell and, taking 
with him the lyre, runs into the temple. This Sappho, 
having turned away introspectively, does not perceive. 
From the olives now the voice of Atthis calls. — Enter- 
ing, she rushes forward with outstretched arms.] 

ATTHIS 
Larichus — Welcome home, my Larichus ! 

[Shrinking back.] 
Ah me, what are you ? 



138 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

SAPPHO 
[ With a smile.] 

Am I, then, so changed ? 

ATTHIS 
Sappho ! but thou art cruel. Where's thy brother ? 
Alcaeus said he waited for me here. 

SAPPHO 
Myself am all thy lovers that are here. 
Why do you sob ? 

ATTHIS 
[Throwing herself on the marble bench.~\ 
He never will return. 

SAPPHO 
[Leaning over her.~\ 
I loved thee, Atthis, long and long ago, 
Even when thou wert a slight and graceless child, 
And should I let this soldier-brother come 
And steal thee now away ? 

ATTHIS 

He does not come. 
Why have you done this to me ? Why are you 
Clad in his armour ? Why have you deceived 
Alcaeus, and now me ? 
[From the colonnade Anactoria enters, in moody revery.~\ 



THE TRAGEDY 139 

SAPPHO 
[Indicates her to Atthis.~] 

Come, ask of her. 
[Going toward the colonnade.'] 

Toria ! ,,'*** i 

[Atthis rises slowly, and looks after her.] 

ANACTORIA 
[Starting from her thoughts, looks in amazement] 

Is it you f 

SAPPHO 

Have I not kept 



My promise well ? 



ANACTORIA 

But — 



SAPPHO 

He hath been here. 



ANACTORIA 



He! 



SAPPHO 

Alcseus : his love-lesson hath begun. 
Did I not tell thee I would teach him well ? 
Leaving me now, he's gone to look for me, 
And looking for his love, he is to find 
You. 



140 SAPPHO AMD PHAON 

ANACTORIA 

Me? 

SAPPHO 

There in the temple I have left 
My violets. Go you and put them on 
And come again. 

[On Anactoria 's face slowly there dawns a light of passion- 
ate triumph^] 

ANACTORIA 

[Raising her clenched hands.] 

Oh ! this is wonderful ! 

[She turns and goes into the temple. Atthis comes wonder- 
ingly to Sappho?^ 

ATTHIS 
And is it for her sake you wear this garb ? 

SAPPHO 
For her sake ? No ; not all ; nor to rebuke 
Alcaeus, all. But there are motives, girl, 
To guess which thou wouldst tremble, for thou art 
What thou wert born — a soft bride to be wooed, 
And 'Hymenaeon !' was thy cradle song ; 
But I — Listen yonder ! 

[Distantly the deep voices of men are heard, lifting a rude and 
intermittent chant, which soon recurs — wild and low — 
more near.] 



THE TRAGEDY 141 

THE VOICES 
Akoue, Poseidon ! 

SAPPHO 

Upward from the shore 
The men-slaves and the beach-folk now are bringing 
Their offerings here to the sea-god, for 
Fair weather on the morrow. — There perhaps 
Among them, there among the dark sea-faces, 
Ruddy with wine and passion, unaware 
My lover walks — a dumb and dreamy slave 
Yearning for liberation. Therefore, Atthis, 
I have put on this garb, that as a man 
I still may search those faces of the night 
Till I shall peer within that bondman's eyes 
And set his spirit free. 

[As Atthis, with a start of half comprehension, is about to 

speak.] 

Hush ; do not guess, 
But go now with thy servant to my house 
And wait for Larichus. — Fear not for me. 

[Atthis kisses Sappho's hand and goes in awe.] 

[Groups of sea-slaves now have begun to enter in the moon- 
light — rough, forbiddi?ig presences of rude physical 
power and superstition ; some are wrapped in cloaks, 
others are almost naked, their sun-da7'kened flesh 
branded with symbols of their owners ; all are bare- 
headed and without weapons. Bringing in their hands 
their sea-offerings, — shells, coral, kelp, and other simple 
tokens, — they place these on the top step before the temple, 
and moved vaguely — now some, now others — to utter 



142 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

their discontinuous chant, gather upon the steps and before 
the temple. Thus, for a minute or more, there transpires 
only pantomime. Upon the entrance of the slaves, Sappho 
atfrst turns instinctively away from the?n, and draws 
her cloak ?nore closely about her. Yearningly, however, 
she turns back and moves among them — silent, search- 
ing. Now she joins a group of three that a?~e drinking 

from a stone wine-jar, scans the?n, and turns elsewhere 
to one who is laying his gift of coral before the altar ; 

from him too she turns and, touching a stooping form, 

peers wistfully an instant at the eyes upraised the?'e to 
hers, then moves toward other forms obscure in the 
shadow s.~\ 

THE SEA-SLAVES 
Iou, Poseidon ! 
\_At this cry of the slaves, the tapestry at the tei?iple door parts, 
and there enters — clad in dark purple and green — the 
Priest of Poseidon, attended by two Acolytes {who 

gather up the offerings). The Priest raises his long 
trident staff, at which the slaves fall upon their faces, 

prostrating themselves with their low cry.'] 

THE SEA-SLAVES 
Chaire, Poseidon ! 
\_Sappho alone remains standing, at once wistful and impe- 
rious. The Priest motiotis toward her with his staff.] 

SAPPHO 
Biddest thou me bow down, O Silent One ? 
Not with these abject children of the earth, 
Nor to thy god. — Not to thy pitiless 
God of the generations, pain and death, 



THE TRAGEDY 143 

Whom I defy ! This day did I release 

Out of his clutch a dove of sacrifice 

Despite of him ; and of these nameless slaves 

Bow'd to his yoke, one — one will I set free 

And lift as an immortal at my side 

This night, in scorn of thee and thy Poseidon. 

Put back thy trident : that is powerless 

To sway me, for unseen the deathless birds 

Of Aphrodite ward me with their wings 

Inviolably free, and passionate 

To dare. Thy god is not my god ; thy law 

Is not my law. 

[Turning from the temple and the priest — who remains im- 
passive, majestically mute — Sappho, pursuing her search 
among the dark forms, passes quickly from the scene 
{right). 

\_As she goes, one of the prostrate slaves on the temple steps, 
who has partly raised himself during her speech, 
rises now alone and gazes after her. It is Phaon. 
Standing erect among the bowed forms of his fellow- 
slaves, he moves a few steps toward the place of Sappho's 
departure, and pauses. The trident of the Priest touches 
his shoulder, but he does not feel it. The other slaves 
rise menaci?igly and, muttering, are about to force him 
prostrate before the Priest, when the latter intervenes and 
mo.tions them away. They depart slowly, uttering their 
chant; the Priest and Acolytes reenter the temple. All 
this Phao?i neither heeds nor sees. Left alone, he stands 
gazing still whe?-e Sappho has departed — in his face the 
struggle of an awaking consciousness. 
\_ Outside from the colonnade, some one whistles. The sound 
is repeated. Phaon turns absently and looks back.] 



144 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

ALCEUS 
[ Outside. ~\ 
Here, water-dog ! 
Stand where thou art. 

\_JEntering.~\ 
Where art thou skulking, cur ? 

PHAON 
\_Bending.~\ 
What would you, lord ? 

ALOEUS 

What makest at this hour 
Here by the holy temple ? 

PHAON 

Seeking, lord. 

ALQEUS 
What, charity ? A meal of maggots ? Some 
Goat's entrails by the altar ? What wast seeking? 

PHAON 

\_Slowly.~\ 
A dream. 

ALCEUS 
\_Bur sting into shrill laughter .] 

Ha — ha, Apollo ! my Apollo ! 
Behold thy Trojan Kalchas lives again, 
Born of a Lesbian sea-bitch ! Lo, a dog 



THE TRAGEDY 145 

Hath sniffed thine altar and become a seer 

And prophet ! Come, my dream-seeker, canst read 

The flight of birds? Look there — those moonlit 

doves — 
What mean their dreamy circlings ? Prophesy ! 



PHAON 

\_L00king over the dim sea, where for a moment a flutter of 
doves is visible, shrinks back supers titiously.~\ 

Death. 

ALC^US 
[His shrill derision checked by a sudden awe.~\ 

Here's enough of this. I, too, am seeking. 
The lady Sappho spoke with thee to-day — 
Answer me, churl : what said she ? 



PHAON 
[Slowly straightening to his erect stature. ] 

She will tell. 

ALC^US 

So shalt thou, scavenger ; 

And if thou'd 'scape the knot-whip, 

Speak quickly. 

PHAON 

I have spoken. 



I46 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

ALC^US 
\_About to burst into passion, pauses and squints maliciously^] 

Oho, an avaricious 
Lick-bones ! 

[Taking from a pouch, hands to Phaon a coin.'] 

An itching mongrel ! 
Here, hound; here's for thy mange. 
Speak ; we'll not tell the lady. 

[Phaon, looking from the coin in his ha?id to Alc&us' face, 
silently tosses the coin over the cliff. Alcceus starts 
passionately. ,] 

Slave, thou shalt have the rack 
For this ; I'll have thy master 
Flay thee. 

PHAON 

I have no master. 
I am a public slave ; 
The city owns me. 

ALC^US 

[Seizing the spear which Sappho has left behind, strikes 
with it at Phaon.] 

Let 
The city burn thy carcass. 

PHAON 
[ Wresting from him the spear."] 
Lord, you have drunk too deep. 



THE TRAGEDY 147 



ALC^US 
Boy — Iacchus ! Ho, boy ! here ! 

[Enter the Ethiopian slave-boy.] 

My guards ! run to my garden 
And fetch them thither. — Run ! 

[Exit the slave.~\ 

By heaven, it grows now plainer 
Why Sappho hath not met me : 
She hath prepared a feast 
Of tidbits for a sea-dog, 
And keeps her chamber. 







PHAON 






She 


Is not at home. 








ALC^US 






So thou 


Hast 


sought her there ! 






PHAON 






I left 



Lately her house. 

[Reenter Sappho, now without her helmet — her dark locks 
falling about her breastplate in the moonlight. She 
stands unobserved, intense, watching the two.~\ 



1 48 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

ALC/EUS 

'Twas so, then ! 
Her brother said so. Faugh ! 
Faugh ! how the mad night reeks it ! 
A slave! — O Larichus, 
Thou spakest well : These sisters 
Are not all that they seem ! 
But she — the Muse! — to turn 
Circe, and set her meshes 
To catch a water-rat — 
A public, prowling slave ! 

PHAON 

No more ! 

ALC/EUS 

But this is Lesbos, 
Where all are lovers ! This 
Will sing most musically 
Set to the lyre : how Sappho, 
Enamour'd of the sea-god, 
Invoked the slime, to yield 
As substitute — 

PHAON 

\_Appro aching near.'] 
No more ! 

ALC^US 

A wharf-rat for her lover. 



THE TRAGEDY 1 49 

PHAON 

[Bursting his culminated self-control, strikes with clenched 
hand Alcceus to the grou?id, where he lies his length, 
unconscious, at the foot of the steps. Ignoring him there, 
Phaon lifts his face with an exultant, dreamy smile, 
speaking low.~\ 

Lord, the stars ! 

Thy stars again ! how glorious they burn ! 



At last ! 



SAPPHO 
[ Coming forward^ 

PHAON 
[Gazing in her face. ~\ 
Still they are burning there. 



SAPPHO 

At last 
Thy hand is lifted and thy blow is fallen. 
Look! at thy feet he bows, alive and prone 
From his proud pedestal : this lord of lords. 
Ha, Aphrodite ! in this man of men 
How I have triumphed ! 

PHAON 

Are you not the same 
That stood amidst us, with thy helmet plume, 
And scorned the silent god ? 



150 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

SAPPHO 

Wert thou so near 
And yet I found thee not ? 

PHAON 

Your spirit found me ; 
Its voice awoke me 'mongst the herded slaves 
And bade me rise towards you, for it said — 
1 One — one will I set free.' 

SAPPHO 

That slave is freed ! 
There lies his bondage stricken in the dust 
By his own hand. 

PHAON 
\Bewildered^\ 

My hand ? 



SAPPHO 

Was it not thine 

That felled him yonder ? Was it not thy soul 
That to his mockery cried out " No more ! " 
And smote him mute ? 



PHAON 

Thou sayest it was I : 
Speak on! — Even so thou spakest by the net. 



THE TRAGEDY 151 

SAPPHO 
Canst thou then name me ? 

PHAON 

Sappho. 

SAPPHO 

Hush ; he breathes 
Less hard ; come hither. 

[They move away to the right."] 

All the waning time 

Of all the stars have I kept watch for thee. 

PHAON 

And I have groped in darkness — toward thine eyes. 

SAPPHO 
Who shall constrain Apollo 'neath the sea 
When he uplifts his glad brow from the fens 
Aspiring to inevitable noon ? 
Who shall constrain Phaon a slave ? 

PHAON 

Speak still ! 

SAPPHO 
Out of thy dim fens hath thy godhead dawned 
Insufferably fair. O Phaon, that 
Which thou hast struck already from thy soul 
I loose now from thy body. 

[With the key of Pittacus, Sappho unfastens the brofize yoke- 
ring from the 7ieck of Phaon, and takes it frotn him in 

her hand.'] 

Know you this ? 



152 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

PHAON 
My name-ring 'tis. 

SAPPHO 
\Reads from the characters in the metal.'] 

* Phaon of Lesbos — slave.' 

PHAON 
[Pressing his hand to his throat.] 

How light ! — how light and strange ! Methought it 

was 
Even myself, a part of me. 

SAPPHO 

Hear how it falls now — a dead thing 
Back to the dust. 

[She drops the bronze ring, which falls with a muffled sound 
to the earth. Watching this, Alcozus, who from his 
swoon has awakened and listened with fierce self-restraint, 
now, unobserved, crawls on the ground to within reach 
of the ring, secures it, and returns silently, while Sappho 
continues speaking to Phaon.] 

Never shalt thou, cramped again in thy sea-sleep, 
Wake at its twinge in thy sinews ; never again in the 

noon-glare 
Feel it scorch in thy flesh familiar shame, nor at 

bitter 
Sundown, numbly, in winter, lay on thy drowsy blood 

its 
Ache long accustomed. 



THE TRAGEDY 1 53 

PHAON 

The clutch hath loosened ; the fingers of bronze 

are 
Loosened. 

SAPPHO 

And with them the yoke of contumely, 
scorn and the callous 
Scar of the drift-wood. 



PHAON 

What breath filleth my body with fire ? 
What is the voice of this cloud that speaketh in flame 
to me ? 



Hear it! 



SAPPHO 

Phaon of Lesbos is dead. 

PHAON 

Ah! 



SAPPHO 

Phaon of Hellas is risen ! 
Phaon of all the ^Eolian isles — of the ages that 

will be 
Unto the Autumn of time : Phaon, the f reedman of 

Sappho. 



154 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

ALC^US 

\_Faintly from where he lies.] 
Larichus ! 

[There is a moment of silence, without motion. Slowly then 
Sappho points to her spear on the ground, speaking to 
Phaon.] 

SAPPHO 
To my service, bondslave : bear 
My spear for me. 

PHAON 
[Lifting the spear, precedes Sappho, as she moves to go.~\ 
Forever ! 
[Exit right. ,] 

ALC^US 
[Half raising himself] 

Larichus ! 



Who speaks to me ? 



SAPPHO 
[Pausing.] 



ALC^EUS 
[Rising.] 
A liar, for he names 
You Larichus : a liar and a dupe 
Of yours. 

SAPPHO 

Alcaeus, you have listened — heard ? 



THE TRAGEDY 1 55 

ALC^US 
Laughter from high Olympus have I heard : 
1 Sappho the Rat-catcher hath speared her quarry ! ' 
Cries blithe Terpsichore. — You shall not go ; 
You shall not, till you hear me. 

\_Sappho, who has started away, pauses again in serene con- 
tempt, and looks full at Alcceus.~\ 

SAPPHO 

Well ? 

ALC.EUS 

Forgive 

The wine-god for my words. But that is past 

And I am bitter earnest. — Men are born, 

Not made ; and what is bred is bred in soul 

And brain more deep than sinews. 

SAPPHO 

Well ? 

ALC^EUS 

A slave 
Shall always be a slave. No yoke of bronze 

Cast off can liberate him. 

SAPPHO 

Yet a slave 
Could bid Alcaeus bow and eat the earth 
Even at his feet. 

ALC^US 

Beware ! I love you. 



156 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

SAPPHO 

I 
Love Phaon. 

ALC^US 

He — 

SAPPHO 
\_Bitingly. ] 

1 Can I constrain a god ? 
Tether him ? Clip his wings ? Say come or go ? 
Love is a voyager ' — or hath this Love 
Changed, since you scoffed at Anactoria ? 

ALC.EUS 
You have upraised him, not himself; and he 
Shall fall more basely from your height. 

SAPPHO 

Oh, I 

Am sure of him as of this liberal air 

breatne. [Reaching upward her arms. .] 

This will not ever fail, nor Phaon. 

ALCEUS 
[Fiercely, staying her as she goes again."] 
Keep from him yet. One knowledge 
I will not spare you now. 
Look down : There in the caverns 
Of sea-weed and the slime-ooze,. 
The tide creatures and reptiles 
Seek in the dark their mates 
And spawn their generations. 



THE TRAGEDY 1 57 

SAPPHO 
[Drawing back.~\ 
The Spring is universal. 

ALC^US 

Even as the Autumn. 

\_Pointing below. ~\ 
He 
Is one of those. His mate 
And brood are there. — Ha, Sappho ! 
You did not know. 

SAPPHO 
[Dreamily^ 
I knew. 

ALCLEUS 
You knew that Phaon — 

SAPPHO 

Was he not a slave, 
And now — no more ? 

ALOEUS 

Impossible ! Art thou 
Sappho of Mitylene ? 

SAPPHO 

Do you dream 
I am not she ? or have you never known 
Sappho ? 



158 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

ALCLEUS 

You are gone blind with passion. 

SAPPHO 

Blind ! 
Have you beheld through the obscuring world 

The Beautiful ? There comes a day, Alcaeus, 

When one of us, that for a million years 

Have gendered in the sun, looks upward in 

His face, and in the features there discerns 

Our own divinity. I am that one ; 

And so the stumbling and unconscious ways 

Of nature are no longer mine : her currents, 

Self-foiled, obstructed, clogged, I sway to sure 

And passionate direction. Thenceforth I 

Am pilgrim and not pathway : destiny 

I am, no more the clay of destiny. 

ALCiEUS 

But Phaon — 

SAPPHO 

Have you felt the maker's joy 
Who out of clay sculptures Hyperion, 
Or out of silence shapes heart-moving song ? — 
That is my joy of Phaon. 

ALOEUS 

You are fooled ; 
Yourself are Nature's bondmaid. 



THE TRAGEDY 1 59 

SAPPHO 

Little minds 
Muddy with resolution. — Go your ways, 
Alcaeus, for I go now to my lover : 
Yea, knowing all thy knowledge do I go, 
And on his liberated soul I stake 
My hope — my life. 

\_Exit right.~] 

ALCEUS 
[Springing after her, then pausing.~] 

Sappho ! — Ah, Muse of Vengeance ! 
A medicine — a medicine for this ! 

[Lifting in his hand the bronze yoke, he reads. ~\ 

' Phaon of Lesbos — slave.' 

\As he stands thus desperately intent, Anactoria enters from 

the temple, wearing the violet-wreath of Sappho. She 

walks direct to him and looks silently in his face, with 

fierce pride and yearning. At her presence, he starts and 

smiles faintly. ~\ 

Her violets! 

ANACTORIA 

She sent them to you — so. 

ALC^US 
[His look turning back from her to the yoke of bronze '.] 

Put them away 
From you. 



160 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

ANACTORIA 

To one who hath herself been put 
Away, they should be fitting. 

ALCiEUS 
[ Watching some one approach.~] 

Pittacus ! 

[Enter in meditatiofi Pittacus. Alcceus — his face lighting 
with sudden exultatio?i — turns to his companion with 
a gesture of passionate defer ence.~\ 

Incomparable Anactoria, 

Beloved ! all those damned subtle chains 

Of Sappho thou hast struck away. Once more 

My vows and I are thine. — Hail, Pittacus ! 

Your boon and blessing ! A betrothal boon 

On us, two foolish lovers reconciled. 

ANACTORIA 

[Utterly bewildered^ 
Alcaeus ! 

PITTACUS 

You and Anactoria ! 

ALCEUS 

Will you deny true love its whims, and heap 
Embarrassment on her, who trembles there ? 
Enough she chooses me, your rival once 
And now your craving friend. 'Twas you who said 
1 Forgiveness better is than punishment.' 
Therefore a boon, to prove it ! 



THE TRAGEDY 161 

PITTACUS 



Would please you ? 



What have I 



ALC^US 

A mere nothing, yet my heart 
Is set upon it. You, my lord, are Tyrant 
Of Mitylene, and as such 'tis you 
Who own the public slaves. — A lover's whim, 
My lord ! — You will remember how to-day 
You struck one of these slaves — a fellow passing 
With drift-wood. 

PITTACUS 
Yes. 



ALCiEUS 

The blame was mine. I can't 
Forget his face. By heaven, I will requite 
That fellow. I would have him feel to-night 
As glad as I am. Sir — a foolish boon ! 
Give him to me to be my body-slave. 



ANACTORIA 

No, no! 



ALC^EUS 
[Reaching his arm toward her.~\ 
Dear love ! 

M 



1 62 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

PITTACUS 

How deep is wine — and truth ! 
This spinning world, 'tis but a street-boy's top, 
And each must whip his own. 

[Passing on.] 

The slave is yours. 

ANACTORIA 
[Starting after.] 
You do not understand. 

ALC.EUS 
[Staying her.] 

'Tis you, sweet girl, 
Who have not guessed my purpose. 



ANACTORIA 
[ Trembling^] 



Tell me. 



PITTACUS 

\_From the colonnade.] 

Friends, 
If you shall chance to meet with Sappho, say 
That Pittacus, her friend, hath sailed for Sparta. 

[Exit.] 

ANACTORIA 
[Feverishly.] 
What would you do with Phaon ? 



THE TRAGEDY 163 

ALCEUS 
[Kissing her hand, which she withdraws. ~\ 

Can't you guess ? 
Love, I have purchased him to wait on you 
In public, when the girl-disciples meet 
And Sappho leads the singing. 

ANACTORIA 
[ Gazing at him, fascinated^ 

Horrible ! 

ALCEUS 

And at the festivals, amid the mirth 
And fluttered laughter of the maidens, Phaon 
Shall bear the wine-sack in, and pass the cakes 
To Sappho, where she sits beside you. — Come ; 
Yonder's my black knave Iacchus. He is running 
Up from my garden. We'll go meet him. 

ANACTORIA 

[Following impotent^ 

Why? 

ALC^EUS 
[Seizing her arm and raising the yoke-ring in his other hand.] 
Why do the robins fly to meet the spring ? 

[Exeunt, left. 2 
[Enter, right, Sappho and Phaon. Each has a hand tipon 
the horizontal spear between them, and — until Sappho 
releases — they speak across it, lifting or lowering it in 
their mutual persuasion^ 



164 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

SAPPHO 
Tis mine. 

PHAON 

'Tis mine. 



SAPPHO 

You must not bear it more 



In servitude. 



PHAON 
[Pleadingly^ 
In service now ! 



SAPPHO 

Even now ? 



Yielded so soon, and all my victory 
Reversed ? — Nay, be it mine in the pursuit, 
For I have been your huntress. 



PHAON 

Him you sought 
You have transformed. O Spirit, Woman, 
Whatso you are, the war-cry of your love 
Shouts in my blood and tingles in my brain 
For action and for freedom and for life. 
Let me go armed to-night — your conqueror. 
Into my hands — the spear! 



THE TRAGEDY 165 

SAPPHO 

A little while 
Be conquered yet ; a little breathing-space 
Fear me — lest I shall fear. 

PHAON 

For what ? 

SAPPHO You are 

Awakened to me from your torpid lair 
So newly masterful. My sudden wound 
Of liberty hath quickened into power 
Till now, imperious, you turn at bay 
And wrestle with me. 

PHAON 
\_Smiling.~\ 

Yield, then. 

SAPPHO ~ . ,. 

O not yet ! 

Still let me be Diana — thou, my stag, 
And through the April uplands of the world 
Flee on, on, burning backward with thine eyes, 
And I forever kindled. 

PHAON 

Not that free 
And lordly animal — 

[Setting his foot upon B ion's tortoise-shell beside him.~\ 

Look there, the thing 

Which you awakened into ecstasy 

Of being — me, this soul you gaze upon. 



1 66 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

SAPPHO 
[Looking from the shell to Phaon'sface.] 

My playmate Hermes — grown to manhood : even 
So might he glance and smile. 

PHAON 

Hermes — what's he ? 

SAPPHO 
A little child I love. — My Phaon, share 
This weapon with me. Make not of me yet 
A woman only. Comrades let us be, 
Or children bargaining their captaincy — 
Agamemnon and his brother, hand in hand 
Against the Trojans. 

PHAON 

Childhood never trafficked 
Rapture like yours. You would not what you ask. 

[Lifting high the spear, to which Sappho's hand still clings.] 

Relinquish ! 

SAPPHO 
Not — playfellow ? 



PHAON 



No. 



SAPPHO 
[Releases her grasp, half fearfully."] 

My peer, then ! 



THE TRAGEDY 1 67 

PHAON 

No, but your lord and lover ! Nevermore 

Shall you be sovereign of your maiden will 

Or single in your fate. Not here with priest 

And song, but with a spear, you have betrothed me. 

[Raising the weapon above kim, and smiling up at it.~\ 

O thou my spear, thou singest in my hand. 

Thou art my power and manhood. Face to face 

Thou pittest me in combat with the gods, 

And raising thee, my mind is raised up 

Confronting heaven, till from those clouds of fire 

This slavish world grows dim, and all that sways it — 

The tyrant's hate, the galley-master's goad, 

The sordid trader's dreams of avarice — 

Dwindle to impotence. Thine is the war 

Which shall not end with time — war with those gods 

That made men's misery. 

[To Sappho. ~\ 

Beloved, know 
What you have quickened, and if you would hear 
The chant of life my lips can never sing, 
Hark, hark now to the hymning of this steel ! 

\_From the cliff he hurls the spear into the night.~\ 
There flies the first : ten thousand will I fling 
Because of you. 

SAPPHO 
[Going to his arms.~\ 
My lover ! 



1 68 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

\Then, as Phaon embraces her, she draws back wistful, and 
peers in the moonlight after the fallen spear.] 

If its dart, 
Falling, should strike a dove ! 



PHAON 

Turn not away. 
Where are your thoughts deep wandered in the night, 
Or what, love, do they hear ? 

[ Where they stand silent, from below the faint roar of the surf 
and a far love-song are dreamily distinguishable.^ 



SAPPHO 

\_Turning to him.~\ 

1 The chant of life ! ' 
Listen ! Your lifted spear hath been a signal 
For that world-music. Even as the master 
Lifteth his staff and all the temple-choir 

Raise their clear chanting, 
So hath it waked those wild-sweet ocean murmurs 
Yonder — Thou hearest with me ! — where the 

crickets 
Melt with that human lover and the night-bird 
Over Mitylene. 

PHAON 
These are but thou ; and thoughts of thee are music. 



THE TRAGEDY 1 69 

SAPPHO 
Nay, but look also ! On the glassy sea-floor, 
White as the moonbeam, how it rises ghostly 
There ! 

PHAON 

'Tis a fog-bank. 

SAPPHO 

Yes, but the cloud is carved : against the night sky, 
Trembling, it lifts the pearl horns of a lyre 
Curved, and a hand that holds a mighty plectron 
Plays to Orion ! 

PHAON 

Nay, 'tis a ship I see : her prow is curving 
Up from the cloudy billows, and her captain, 
Standing upon it, where the bending oarsmen 

Churn the bright star-foam, 
Points to the world beneath them — all its kingdoms 
Kindling with men, and to his one companion 
Speaks in the silence : ' All this will I conquer, 
Sappho ! ' 

SAPPHO 

My master ! 
[Enter, from the colonnade, Anactoria^\ 

ANACTORIA 
[Wildly^ 
He is coming : go ! Go in the temple ! 



I JO SAPPHO AND PHAON" 

SAPPHO 

Who 
Is coming, 'Toria ? 

ANACTORIA 

Alcaeus ! Oh, 
Mad was I for his love, and blind with dread 
Of you. I did not dream his horrible 
Vengeance. Go in the temple. 



SAPPHO 



ANACTORIA 



Why? 

In there 



Is sanctuary. [7J> phaon ^ 

He can take thee not 



PHAON 



Take me ? 



ANACTORIA 

Thou art his body-slave, his flesh, 
His chattels. Pittacus hath granted him 
Thee and thy freedom. He is coming now 
To seize thee. 

PHAON 
[As Sappho, with a cry, goes to him.'] 

I will greet him. 



THE TRAGEDY 171 

ANACTORIA 

Nay, he brings 
His guards — two score of spearmen. 

SAPPHO 

\_To Phaon.~] 

Come with me ; 

My house will shelter us. 

ANACTORIA 

You cannot leave ; 
The ways are held, his men surround this place. 

SAPPHO 
[ Tensely. ~\ 
Is there no path unknown to them ? 

PHAON 

This one. 

SAPPHO 

The cliff-path, ah ! Quick, Phaon : we will go 
Here. 

PHAON 

You would dare this with me ? 



SAPPHO 

Am I not 
Yours ? 

PHAON 

You will go ? 



172 SAPPHO AND PHAON 



SAPPHO 

Even to the underworld ! 

PHAON 

Against the Tyrant's will ? 

SAPPHO 

Against the gods'. 

PHAON 
[Moves with swift decision. ~\ 
Come, then ; my boat is there. 

ANACTORIA 
[Imploringly, to Sappho?^ 

Stay ! — there is death. 
Your brother is returned. Stay in the temple 
Till I can bring him here. 

SAPPHO 

Not Larichus. 
At dawn he brings his bride. They must not know 
This thing. [Imperiously.] 

Go : keep it from them — for my sake. 

ANACTORIA 
[Goes.] 
For thy sake would that I had killed myself ! 

[Exit, left.~\ 



THE TRAGEDY 1 73 

SAPPHO 
\_To Phaon.~\ 
Look there : what gleams among the olives ? 



PHAON 

Spears. 
They are coming. 

SAPPHO 
\_In dread, pro tectingly.~] 
Phaon ! 



PHAON 

See, the path falls sheer 
Into the wave — my arms your only staff. 

[Swinging from the cliff, Phaon takes footing upon the jutted 
path below, his face and shoulder only visible as he 
reaches upward to Sappho } s support.] 

Still do you dare ? 

SAPPHO 

We must dare all to be 
Ourselves. — Your arms, love ! — Now to the world's 

end, 
The islands of the Cyclops in the seas ! 

I Sappho and Phaon disappear below the cliff. As they do so 
there is heard the low rattle of greaves and, emerging 
on the edges of the scene, the points of spear-heads glisten. 
Simicltaiieously,from the temple, comes forth Thalassa — 
her babe at her breast — followed by Bion, who carries 
in his hands the lyre.] 



1^4 SAPPHO AND PHAOJV 

THALASSA 

[Searching with her eyes.~\ 

He tarrieth long away — 
Too long for the fever ; yet 
At last will he come to me. 

[Stooping in the shadow of the pillar, she sits on the lowest 
step leading to the shrine. There, while the little boy, in 
his garb of sea-weed, wanders in the moonlight, thrum- 
ming the strings of the lyre with low, monotonous 
cadence, Thalassa clutches her babe close, and sway- 
ing her body with a strange rhythm, suckles the fever- 
stricken child. From there, as she sings, her voice floats 
mournfully in the night.~\ 

Hesper, Hesper, 

Eleleu ! 
Lord of evening, thou that bringest 
All that lovely Morning scattered — 

Eleleu ! Eleleu ! 
Lord, the sheep, the goat thou bringest, 
The child to its mother. 

Eleleu ! 
[Slowly the Herculaneum curtain shuts off the scene. ~\ 



Here follows the Pantomime of the Second Interlude. 
Vide Appendix. 



** 



ACT III 



ACT III 

Earliest daybreak is beginning to struggle faintly with the 
light of the low moon, muffled now by masses of slowly 
indrif ting fog fro??i the sea, in the backgrottnd. Against 
this, stand out vaguely the outlines of the temple, uncer- 
tain shadows of which are cast upon the fog by the glow 
of the still blazing urn. Beside this urn, white-haired, 
clad in his dark-flowing purple and green, stands the 
Priest of Poseidon, replenishing it with fagots. All is 
silent, and the last of the swinging lamps in the olive 
grove flickers out. 

As the Priest, leaning wearily on his trident-staff, moves 
slowly from the urn, there enters to him, from the temple, 
Phaon. About him is thrown a rough fisher 's cloak. 
He greets the Priest in a low voice and points back to 
the temple. 

PHAON 

Father, she rests ; the holy vestals fetch her there 
Garments and warmth. — Ah, blessed was thy beacon ! 

Calm 
All night it gazed upon us like a parent's eye 
Guiding us home to refuge, when the lamps of heaven 
Themselves were swallowed up with black, insuffer- 
able 
Fog. Father, speak ! What is this portent ? And 
this pang 

N 177 



178 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

Of cold and clutching cloud — what meaneth it, that 

never 
Since I was child, can I remember like to this ? 
Yet first methought I dreamed it : all last evening 
Darkly it hung with mist my mind; but now that fog, 
Which rolled and gathered in imagination, look ! 
This air and actual world are palled and numb with 

it. 
Oh, if this thing be more than earthly, tell ! 

[The Priest turns away.~\ 

Forgive, 
I had forgot thy vow of silence to the god. 

Yet answer me in sign : is it Poseidon's anger ? 

[The Priest nods assent.] 

Yet wherefore is he angry ? Hath some mortal 

broken 
His law ? 

[The Priest, nodding once more assent, moves past Phaon.~\ 

Stay, father ! — Who ? Who hath offended him ? 

\_The Priest gazes sadly into Phaorfs face, then, giving no 
further sign, passes iuto the te?nple. Phaon starts, with 
a low cry offear.~\ 

Ah me, Poseidon, lord ! / have offended thee. 

[Going to the altar, Phaon prostrates himself to the earth 
and remains there, bowed. After a b?'ief pause enter 
from the temple Sappho, clad in the white garment of a 
vestal. Seeing Phaon, she comes down furtively and 
stands beside him. For a moment Phaon does ?iot see 
her. Then as with a shiver she touches his shoulder, 
he leaps up beside her, ardent."] 



THE TRAGEDY 179 

Once more ! 

[Pausing, he draws back in awe."] 
How art thou changed ! Scarce would I dream 



Tis thou. 



SAPPHO 

The virgins they have clothed me. 



PHAON 

Why 
Have you come forth into the cold ? 



SAPPHO 

How long 
Until the day ? 

PHAON 

Already it grows dawn; 
Were it clear, the cedars would be burning black 
Along the yellow hill-sky. You are chilled : 
Still you are trembling from the sea-damp. — Here ! 

[Taking his cloak from his shoulders, he throws it about 

her,] 

SAPPHO 
It may be that ; it may be so. 



PHAON 

Come in 
And warm thee. 



1 80 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

SAPPHO 
Phaon, no ; 'tis not the night 
Hath deadened so my heart ; hardly it beats. 
'Tis not the chill, the faintness and the fog. 

PHAON 

What is it, Sappho ? 

SAPPHO 
\Turning to him, i??ipetuons.~\ 

Ah ! why are we here ? 
Wherefore have you returned and brought me back ? 
Why are we not still there — out there alone 
Together in thy little groping boat, 
Lost, rudderless, amid the unimagin'd 
Glooms of the gray ^Egean ! Over us — 
No wider than the space betwixt our faces — 
The fog had built a tent, and shut away 
Sky, shore, and men and temples, yet our eyes 
Had lighted there an inward universe 
More vast, wherein our hearts stood still, and breathed 
The awful passion of the breathing tide. 
Ah, why did you turn back ? 

PHAON 
\Hesitant^\ 

You would have perished ; 
Twice in my arms you fainted with the cold. 

SAPPHO 

Not with the cold — with ecstasy of fire ! 



THE TRAGEDY l8l 

PHAON 
[Uneasily, veiling his deeper reason .] 
This holy beacon gleamed our only sign 
Of haven ; 'twas the god who summoned us. — 
Food, warmth, and life were here for you. 



And fear ! 



SAPPHO 

Portent and fear. 

PHAON 

What fear ? 

SAPPHO 

Unspeakable ! 
[To herself.] 

Whilst we returned, methought I heard again 

The croon of that eternal cradle-song, 

And — all of mist — the awful Mother rose, 

Outreaching on the air her vacant arms. 

[ Wildly, to Phaon.~\ 

O better to have died together there 
Than here — to separate. 

PHAON 

That will not be. 

SAPPHO 

Phaon, they will find you here. Come to the boat 

Once more. 

[Taking hold of him as togo.~\ 

Come back with me. 



1 82 SAPPHO AMD PHAON 

PHAON 
[Putting her hand away.~\ 

You know not yet 
The mightiest cause of my return. 

SAPPHO 

The fog, 
You said. But see — the dawn ! The fog will lift. 

PHAON 

The fog will never lift — if we go yet. 

SAPPHO 

What do you mean ? 

PHAON 
[His face taking on a look of superstitious fear, his body — 
slowly — a slave-like bearing, he half whispers myste- 
riously^ 

Sappho, I know the fog ; 

Since boyhood I have known. This is not fog. 
This is the wrath and darkness of the god : 
/ have offended him. 

SAPPHO 

Look not like that ! 



PHAON 
The dove I should have killed for him — it lives ; 
You took it from me, but it was Poseidon's. 
Therefore I have returned to appease his anger. 



THE TRAGEDY 1 83 

SAPPHO 

Phaon, drift not away ! In pity of 
Our love, drift not away. 

PHAON 

This will not lift 
Till I have sacrificed. 

[Going.] 

Wait but a little 
And I will find a victim. 

SAPPHO 
[ With imperious appealJ] 

Do you say 
This — you, that for our liberty defied 
With me fate and the gods ? 

PHAON 

That blasphemy 
Hath raised this cloud. The sea-god demands death, 
And I must sacrifice. 

SAPPHO 

Stoop not to this ! 
Our wills are their own Providence, and shape 
The mandates of the immortals to their ends. 

PHAON 

Wait : I will not be long. 



1 84 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

SAPPHO 
\_Following?[ 

It must not be. 
Phaon, this thought itself is bondage. Think : 
To you I yielded as my guiding star, 
And now if you shall fall, our heaven and we 
Shall have one darkness. Be once more thyself — 
Master of life. 

\_From off the scene, left, is heard the low thrumming of a 
stringed instrument. Phaon stops to listen.] 

PHAON 
What sound is that ? 

SAPPHO 

f After a pause. ~\ 

L J Alcseus, 

His lyre it is ; the tone of it I know. — 
Come back, or he will seize you. Phaon ! 

PHAON 
[Raising his clasped hands, exultant '.] 

Lord! 

Thy victim ! Thou hast sent him to my hands. 

SAPPHO 
You know him not : his guards are with him there 
To do his vengeance. He will violate 
The temple in the dark, and murder you. 

[Phaon hastens to the altar.~\ 
What would you do ? 



THE TRAGEDY 185 

PHAON 
[Seizing the knife of rituaL~\ 

He comes for sacrifice ; 
The god, not I, hath summoned him. 

[ Calling into the mist.'] 



Alcaeus ! 



Phaon, be silent. 



SAPPHO 
[Imploring. ] 



PHAON 
[Mounting the steps toward the colonnade^ 

Mockest thou me, Alcaeus ? 
Makest thou me thy slave to tinkling strings 
And thrum of music ? 

SAPPHO 
[Clinging to him.~\ 
Hush. 



PHAON 
[Putting her away.] 

Come, take me ; here 



Ami. 



SAPPHO 
[Numbly. ~\ 
The star is fallen. 



1 86 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

PHAON 
[To Sappho. ,] 

Fear no more ; 
I have but drawn him on. Now will I be 
Silent — and sure. 

[ Crouching behi?id the second pillar, he holds the long knife 
drawn and, waiting, murmurs to Sappho, who stands 
pale and spellbound.~\ 

Soon shall the fog be lifted. 

[The low thrumming sounds draw near and nearer, along 
the colonnade, until suddenly Phaon, listening, springs 
forward and strikes blindly behind the pillar in the 
obscurity^ 

Thy blood upon me ! 

[He leaps back.~\ 

A CHILD'S VOICE 

[Cries in the dimness. ] 

Babbo! 

[From behind the pillar, Bion, the child, with arms out- 
stretched to Phaon, staggers forward and falls, dropping 
from his hands a lyre. Phaon, staring for an instant, 
turns away his face toward Sappho, and points to the 
earth behind him .] 



PHAON 

What is there ? 



THE TRAGEDY 1 87 

SAPPHO 
\_Kneeling, raises the lyre and looks upon the boy.~] 

The lyre I played. Ah, little Hermes, thou ! 

Lift up thy head, my luck-boy. Tis thy friend, dear, 

The goddess. 

PHAON 
[Turning supers titiously.] 

Ha! 

SAPPHO 

The blood ! His heart's still. 

[Rising fiercely toward Phaon.] 

Have murdered him — my elf, my intercessor ! 
Blindly you struck this blow in your own darkness 
And killed him — innocent. Look ! I accuse you ! 
His blood is on you. 

PHAON 
[ Who has looked, speechless, upon the body, sinks upon his 

knees beside it.~\ 

Bion, my son ! 

SAPPHO 

{Shrinking back.-] H is father! 

[There is an utter silence. Sappho, gazing at the two, mur- 
murs to herself in awe.'] 

And if the dove had died, the child had lived. 

[ With impulsive tenderness, she moves to speak to Phaon, but 

over his bowed form, her utterance fails. At last she 

half whispers to him.] 
Phaon, I did not know. — Phaon ! 



1 88 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

PHAON 
[ Oblivious, touches the child'' s tumbled hair.~\ 

Shalt grow 
No taller now among the iris-reeds. 

SAPPHO 

Mine is this deed, not yours. My sorrow shall 
Be ransom for you. 

PHAON 
[Rises slowly. ,] 

What hast thou for me ? 
Thou which hast taken him ! — O moi ! Thalassa ! 

[He rushes into the temple .] 

SAPPHO 

[ Wildly, following him.~\ 

No, no — not her ! Not now to her ! 

\_From off the scene, left, is heard a low crooning sound — the 
voice of Thalassa.~\ 

THALASSA 

Eleu! 

[Sappho, at the temple door, pauses, clutching the tapestry.'] 

Where art thou, my Bion ? Dim 
The way is ; I hear thy shell 
No more ; strike it louder. , 



THE TRAGEDY 1 89 

[Thalassa enters, bearing in her arms the babe.~\ 

Didst 

Thou meet thy Babbo ? We 

Have followed thy music far, 

Yet nowhere we found him in 

The night. Speak : where art thou ? — Ah, 

Thou'st wearied, and laid thee down 

Asleep. 

SAPPHO 

[Stepping forward, with compassion, intercepts Thalassa* s 
gaze from the body.] 

Come no nearer. Go 
In peace. 

THALASSA 

The bright lady ! 

[Starting toward Sappho, she holds out to her the swaddled 

babe.] 

Feel, 
'Tis cold now : will drink no more 
Its mother's milk. 

[ Taking from her bosom the dolphin-bracelet.'] 

Look, 'tis here — 
Thine arm- ring, the shining curse 
Thou gavest to Phaon ; take 
The gold thing ! Ah, take it back 
That so may my little one 
Be warm now, and drink again. 



190 SAPPHO AND PHAON 



Tis cold ? 



SAPPHO 
\TremblingI\ 



THALASSA 

[Fiercely.'] 

Nay, shalt touch it not ! 
'Tis mine, mine ! Take thou the gold 
And give me its smile again. 

SAPPHO 

[Slowly taking the bracelet froni Thalassa, peers at the 

infanfsface and draws away.] 
Ah me! 

THALASSA 
[Looking from Sappho to the child with an eager hope.~] 

Thou hast ta'en it back 
At last ! Still why keepest thou 
The warmth of it ? Mine it is — 
Not thine — the babe. Give it me 
In my arm alive ! 

SAPPHO 
[Anguished, turns upon Thalassa.~\ 

What am I 
To thee ? Or what art thou 
Or this to me ? — Not I, 
Not I it was who chilled its little heart. 
I say it was not I. 



THE TRAGEDY 191 

\_Thalassa, heedless and unhearing, watches only the child's 
face, while from her own the light of hope goes slowly out.~] 

Phaon I took from thee, 

Phaon I freed, because his soul is mine 

And mine his own ; and these — 

These little lifeless ones — I would have given 

Joy of their days ; but now 

This double bolt from heaven, this aimless death 

Hath snatched them, as the lightning slayeth the 

sheep. — 
O say not it was I ! 

THALASSA 

It stirs not ; it nestles not. 
Perchance yet the sacrifice 
Shall make it to breathe again. 

[Moving toward the temple.'] 

Its father will know. — 

SAPPHO 
[Placing herself in her path .] 

Not there ! 
Go to thy kin on the beaches, 
Bearing thy sorrow. Go quickly 
Lest it shall be too late. 

THALASSA 
{Smiling wanly, murmurs to the infant.'] 
Nestling ! 



192 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

SAPPHO 
Hear me ! I plead to you. Passionate 
Slave imperturbable ! Sibyl — 
Sphynx of maternity ! Hear me 
Now ; I am humble. 

THALASSA 

Eleu! 
Nine moons was I blithe of it, 
Awaiting the cry of it ; 
Ah, glad was the glimpse of it 
And soft were the fingers ; warm 
It clung to me. 

SAPPHO 
[Terribly, ~\ 
Leave me : I fear you. 
You, of all beings, alone I 
Fear. On the waters I feared you. 
Even as he rowed us to freedom, 
Out of the drip of his oars, you 
Sang to him. Out of the fog-bank, 
Fog-born, the fate of you rose, and 
Drew us to shore again* But though, 
Sibyl, I feared you, yet now I 
Challenge. Not so shall that vision 
Blast, which I witnessed with Phaon 
Here — No, not so shall the coil of 
Circumstance strangle us ! /, not 
You, am his destiny. — Prove us ! 

[Reenter Phaon from the temple .] 



THE TRAGEDY 193 



THALASSA 
[Going to him.'] 

Look, Babbo : 'tis gone away, 
Hath left my arms. 

PHAON 

[Looking on the infant?] 

Both! 

[Gazing away to the sea.~\ 

The night 
Is lifting now. 

THALASSA 

Phaon, hast 
Thou sacrificed ? 

PHAON 

[Pointing where Bion ties.'] 
There : 'tis done. 



THALASSA 

[Turning swiftly to the body, stoops near.] 

Poseidon ! Poseidon ! Ah ! 

[Crouching over the body, she moans low and lays the infant 

beside it.] 

Io ! io ! Sleep with him. 

[She bows prostrate over the children?] 



194 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

PHAON 

[ With sullen fierceness, slave-like, approaches Sappho.~\ 

Goddess, be merciful — thou that hast maddened me ! 

Thou that in longing 
Infinite yearnest for life, be appeased now. For 

thee — for thee this 
Sacrifice ! Look, we have made our offering. There 

is our life-blood : 
Warm is it still, and the opened hearts have yielded 

their happy 
Spirits to thee. Be appeased ! 

SAPPHO 

Phaon, do you not know me? 

PHAON 

Long have I known thee — too long. First in my 

boyhood I saw thee. 
Thou from the awful immortals earnest in storm, and 

thy beauty 
Blinded the day ; and the slave-folk warned me, but 

I would not heed their 
Counsel. I loved thee. Ah, why — why now again 

in thy vengeance 
Hast thou returned here to curse me ? Thou, not 

Poseidon, hast spread these 
Meshes of cloud to entangle me in this murder. 



SAPPHO 
[ Cries aloudJ\ 



No, Phaon ! 



THE TRAGEDY 1 95 

PHAON 

Kneel, Thalassa, bow down ! Bow down to the 

Lady of Heaven ; 

Pray thou with me. 

{To Sappho^ 

O remove thy scourge from us, 
most wretched slaves. 

THALASSA 
\_B owing down with Phaon before Sappho .] 

Bright 
Lady, give us our bairns again ! 

SAPPHO 

Kneel not ! No Lady of Heaven — 
Sappho am I, and a mortal wretched as ye are : a 

woman 
Born from the pang of a mother like thee, Thalassa 

— a woman 

Passionate, seeking the love of the man that loveth 
her. Phaon, 

Phaon ! Remember you not this place in the sun- 
set, — the brightening 

Moon on the ^Egean, the falling cliff-path below us, 
the crying 

Sea-birds — my hand on thy shoulder? I am Sappho 

— that Sappho ! 

PHAON 
{Dreamily .] 

Glorious there was your face as you leaned to me. 



196 SAPPHO AND PHAON~ 

SAPPHO 

Hast thou forgotten 

How, with our hands on my spear between us, we 

wrestled for mastery 
Here ? — How you pleaded and, lordly, bade me 

relinquish, and conquered ? 

PHAON 

Over your golden breastplate glooming, your hair like 

the tempest 
Darkened. 

SAPPHO 

[Moving gradually nearer the cliff, while Phaon follows — 
hesitant, fascinated^ 

You lifted it high — the spear — and gazed 

on it, raising 
Upward your glowing mind to it, crying aloud 'gainst 

the heaven 
War on the tyrant gods that make men's slavery. 



PHAON 

Starlight 
Shone in your smile. 

SAPPHO 

How you towered, god- 
like yourself, — yea, as even 
Now ! — and the spear in your hand grew divine — a 
fiery symbol. 



THE TRAGEDY 1 97 

PHAON 
Yours was that fire. 

SAPPHO 

Then you hurled it into the 
mystery — hurled it 
Singing — and turned to me. 

{Exulting, as Phaon — ardent— reaches toward her."] 

So! 

PHAON 
Beloved ! 

SAPPHO 

Thou art restored to me ! 
{Springing to the cliff-path. ~\ 
Come, then : Our vision has triumphed. 

THALASSA 
[ Calling low.] 

Babbo ! 

PHAON 

[Pausing wildly, with instant revolution lapses to his slave's 

posture.'] 

Ha ! thou art tempting 

Me to thy power again. 

{Going to Thalassa, who still is bowed, stricken, over the 

bodies.] 

Thalassa, come to me ! 



198 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

THALASSA 

[Lifts her craving face to his.'] 

Give them 
Back to me, Babbo. 

PHAON 
[Starting,] 

Babbo ! — Hark, they are calling it : " Babbo ! " 
" Father ! ,! From yonder they call to me, lifting 

their little arms hither 
Out of the dark of Hades. — Cease now, my Bion ! I 

hear thee, 
Yea, and will bring ye both home again. 

[Raising Thalassa to him.] 

Mother of them, thou my slave-mate, 

Come with me ! I — thou and I — shall draw them 
again to us — call their 

Flitting ghosts back into flesh and blood — warm 
again in our arms. Come, 

Come to the beach with me : far, far in the salty- 
weed caverns, 

There will I give thee them back, and make repara- 
tion ; there shalt thou 

Bear to me children — alive, bright-eyed avengers of 
me, their 

Father, — this murder. Thalassa, lift up yon little 
body, 

And I will bear in my son unto the temple. 



THE TRAGEDY 1 99 

\_Lifting the dead boy in his arms, he goes with the slave- 
woman, who carries the infant child. At the door of the 
temple, where their eyes meet across the dead forms of 
their children, Phaon gives to her a yearning look of ten- 
derness, and they enter the temple. 

From her place by the cliff whence she has watched without 
moving, Sappho calls with anguished appeal. ,] 

SAPPHO 

Thalassa ! 
\The colours of sunrise begin now to flood the scene. Away 
on the left are heard the voices of men and maidens 
singing.'] 

THE VOICES 
Gath'rers, what have ye forgot, 

Hymenceon ! 
Blushing ripe on the end of the bough ? 

Hymenceon ! 
Ripe now, but ye may not reach — 
For the bride is won, and the groom is strong : 

Kala, O Chariessa / 

SAPPHO 
\_Murmurs.~] 
The epithalamium ! — and so the end ! 

\_Slowly, with aspect of succumbed despair, Sappho moves to- 
ward the steps of Aphrodite's shrine. As she does so, the 
Priest of Poseidon comes from the temple to the first pillar 
and, raising there his trident toward the sunrise, stands 
awaiting the approaching singers, whose flutes and lyres 
sound nearer. 



200 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

Art thou then come once more, O Silent One ? 
[Sinking at his feet.'] 

God of the generations, pain, and death, 

I bow to thee. — Not for love's sake is love's 

Fierce happiness, but for the after-race. 

Yet, thou eternal Watcher of the tides, 

Knowing their passions, tell me ! Why must we 

Rapturous beings of the spray and storm 

That, chanting, beat our hearts against thy shores 

Of aspiration — ebb ? ebb and return 

Into the songless deep? Are we no more 

Than foam upon thy garment ? — flying spume 

Caught on thy trident's horn, to flash the sun 

An instant — and expire ? Are we no more ? 

Reveal to me ! Break once thine infinite 

Vow of secretiveness, and whisper it 

Soft. I will keep thy secret. 

\Rising.~\ 

Thou wilt not ! 
Thou wilt divulge it — never. Fare you well ! 
\_She rushes up the steps to the jutting shrine. ~\ 

Another wave has broken at your feet 
And, moaning, wanes into oblivion. 
But not its radiance ! That flashes back 
Into the Morning, and shall flame again 
Over a myriad waves. That flame am I, 
Nor thou, Poseidon, shalt extinguish me. 
My spirit is thy changeling, and returns 
To her, who glows beyond the stars of birth — 
To her, who is herself time's passion-star. 



THE TRAGEDY 201 

\_Turmngto the edge of the rock, Sappho calls upward into the 
breaking mists, through which the full glory of mortiing 
ruddies her white robe with its splendour.] 

Beautiful Sister, goddess of desire, 
Come to me ! Clasp me in your wings of sunrise 
Burning, for see ! I go forth to you burning 
Still. — Aphrodite ! 

[She leaps into the fog and disappears. 

As she vanishes, there enters, through the colonnade, singing, 
the bridal procession of youths and girl- disciples, accom- 
panying Atthis, who holds, smiling, the hand of a youth 
in gold armour. As these reach and pass the silent form 
of the Priest, the fog — increasing from the sea — rolls 
over the scene."] 

VOICES OF THE SINGERS 

Like the stars about the moon 

Hymenceon ! 
When her orbed smile she shows, 

HymencEon ! 
Lovers, yield to her your light ; 
She is single in the night. 

Kala, O Chariessa ! 

[ With ever-increasing obscurity the fog closes down, until — 
as the last of the men and maidens pass into the veiled 
temple — the scene is involved in darkness entire, save 
where, beside his pillar, the brooding Priest of Poseidon is 
vaguely visible. 

Gradually, then, on the foggy texture of this obscurity, the out- 
lines of another scene become apparent ; and while the 
female voices within the temple die away, and the male 



202 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

voices, blending, pass without cessation into a song of 
diffe?-ent melody in Italian, the Brooding Figure is itself 
obscured, and there stands now, beside the lava pillar of 
the excavation — the archozologist, Medbery. Simulta- 
neously the dimness is pierced by the rays of approaching 
torches, and enter — through the right door of the 
Prologue-scene — the Neapolitan Labourers > singing."] 

Tutt' altro ciel mi chiama, 

Addio ! Addio ! 
Ma questo cor ti brama, 

E il cor, il cor ti lascer6! 

Di bacie d' armonia 

E 1' aura tua ripiena, 
O magica Sirena 

Fedel, fedele a te saro ! . . . 

Addio, O care memorie 
Del tempo, ah ! che fuggi ! 

[Having placed their torches, and with their picks begun to 
strike the lava with muffled reverberation, one of the 
Labourers stoops and lifts, from the newly dug debris, a 
curved object, which he hands to the pensive archceolo- 
gist. The others pause in their lazy digging, and look 
at him.'] 

MEDBERY 
\_Taking it in his hand.] 

A lyre of tortoise-shell! How long it has lain 
silent in the heart of Time ! Ah, no — this was no 
dream. Here Sappho dreams — buried, but not dead. 



THE EPILOGUE 203 

Here we shall find her asleep in the arms of her lover 
— the Antique World : — And / shall awaken her ! 
Labourers, to your work ! Your picks are ready ; the 
ava crumbles. Scavate! Dig — dig ! 

"As the Labourers resume their labour and their song] 

THE MODERN CURTAIN FALLS. 



APPENDIX 

FIRST AND SECOND INTERLUDES 

[PANTOMIME] 

verum ita risores, ita commendare dicaces 
conveniet Satyros, ita vertere seria ludo. 

— Horace : De Arte Poetica. 

segnius inritant animos demissa per aurem 
quam quae sunt oculis subiecta fidelibus et quae 
ipse sibi tradit spectator. 

— Idem. 



FIRST AND SECOND INTERLUDES 




CHARACTERS 

Pantomimus x — announcing the Pantombne, " Hercules and 
the Sfihinx" before the Herculaneum Audience. 

Varius, 1 Horace, 1 Virgil, 1 Maecenas, 1 Pollio, 1 as Mutes. 



Hercules, the demigod 

Silenus, the satyr 

Servus, a slave 

Omphale, a Nymph {after- 
ward disguised as 
the Sphinx) 

Boy-mimes, as Fauns {after- 
ward as Cupids) 

Girl-mimes, as Nymphs {after- 
ward as Psyches) 



Masked Characters 
in the Pantomime : 
Mutes 



Unmasked Characters 
in the Pantomime : 
Mutes and Lyrists 



1 Appears only in First Interlude. 



FIRST INTERLUDE 

Performed before the Herculaneum Curtain between 
Act I and Act II of the Tragedy. 




FIRST INTERLUDE 

No sooner has the curtain closed than from their 
hidden seats the Herculaneum audience burst into 
murmurous applause, mingled with the cries of "Vivat! 
Vale, Varius ! Plaudite ! " At this, Horace, Virgil, 
Varius, Maecenas, and Pollio appear from their places 
[which, during the Act of the Tragedy, they have oc- 
cupied in a row beyond sight] and take seats in the 
first row of marble chairs. 

Here they are greeted again by the Herculaneum 
audience, whom Varius, rising, salutes, and is about 
to address when enters, through the door in the cur- 
tain, Pantomimus, a parti-coloured figure, garbed 
antiquely as a harlequin, wreathed and masked. 1 

Perceiving his entrance, Varius makes a gesture to 
the audience indicative that he cannot then respond 
to their applause, and with that sits down to watch 
the ensuing action. 

Behind Pantomimus, enter [on either side of him] 
two little Pantomimi, half his height, exactly re- 
sembling him in every particular. These, as with a 
skipping step and motion Pantomimus speaks his 
Introduction, imitate in dumb show his every move- 
ment of wand and gesture, and this with such 
simultaneousness, that they appear like his twin- 
images in miniature projected beside him. 

1 In one hand, Pantomimus carries a wand resembling a caduceus, 
but differing from that of Mercury in that the heads of the twining 
snakes are carved as little masks of comedy, and the tip of the wand, 
to which the flying wings are affixed, is the shining disk of a mirror, 
into which at times Pantomimus peers quaintly at his reflection. 

211 



212 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

Pantomimus makes his entrance with suddenness 
and, raising his caduceus for silence, speaks his first 
four lines from the top of the steps. Descending 
then to the centre of the orchestra space, he recites 
the remainder, with agile gestures, to the low, quick- 
thrummed accompaniment of a harpist [within the 
wings] . 

PANTOMIMUS 

Salve, 
Herculaneans ! 

Hush: 
Pantomimus I ! 
Behold my palace : 

Up that slit 

Through the floor 
I plucked it. — Ecce ! 

So you see 
How thin a wall 
Divides the wise 

From the fools. 

T'other side 
Melpomene, 
The tragic Muse, 

Weaves the plot ; 

This side now 
(Behind her back) 
I pull her play 

Wrong-side-out. 

Thus in the seams 
Shall we reversed 
View the design, 

And so discern 

How the crease 
In Grandeur's scowl 
Is but a grin 

Up-side-down. 



FIRST INTERLUDE 213 

Therefore, as critic 

Who would test 

Tragedy, 
Between the curtains 
I slip a mask on, 

Catch the Muse, 

Gag her mouth, 
Skew up her eyebrows, 
And thus ask pardon : 

" O Olympic 

Lady, if so 
Grotesque a greeting 

Mar and tarnish 
Your chaste complexion, 
Then am I certain 

You're no sky-born 

Goddess, but merely 
A painted drab. 
So, lords, a masquerade I leave you : 

A hero, and 

A riddle and 

A heroine — 

THE SPHINX AND HERCULES : the riddle 

To find the tragic Muse. — Heaven help you ! 
[Exit, with Pantomimi, within the curtain door.'] 

Enter at left aisle and at right [as in the Prelude] 
the two Flutists, whose playing outside has accom- 
panied the speech of Pantomimus. These, now 
visible, accompany the ensuing pantomime, with flute 
and harp. With these, enter two slaves [functionaries 
of the theatre] bearing two stage-properties, which they 
place on either side, near the wings : that of the right- 
hand one represents a squat pillar, on top of which is 
the sitting figure of a bronze Sphinx : that of the left- 
hand — a set-piece of foliage and shrubbery. Exeunt. 



214 SAPPHO AND PHAOAT 




Enter then, at left, the first of the Pantomimists — 
Servns, a house-slave, masked as such. He places at 
the foot of the steps, centre, a low seat and, beside it, 
a heap of wool and spinning materials. There he 
prostrates himself toward the left entrance, as enter 
there — dancing to harp music — a group of young 
girl-mimes [without masks], dressed as Nymphs and 
carrying distaffs. 

In the midst of these — preceded by most of them 
— enter Hercules, in grotesque mask, which depicts 
a comic-dejected expression. He is wadded after the 
manner of the comic histrionic vase-figures of an- 
tiquity, and walks downcast. Instead of his legen- 
dary lion's skin, there hangs from his shoulder the 
woolly pelt of a sheep ; in place of his knotted club, 
his hand holds a huge distaff ; and for the rest he is 
dressed like a Greek woman. 

He is accompanied by Omphale, masked as a 
beautiful and amorous nymph. Over her shoulders 
she wears his lion's skin ; in one hand she holds his 
massive club ; with the other she caresses him. 

With coquetting wiles, the Nymphs in their danc- 
ing draw the two toward the centre, where they sit 
beside the wool — Hercules, with heavy sighs, begin- 
ning to spin, while Omphale, posing in the lion's 
skin, approves his labour. Here the Nymphs, re- 
clined about them on the steps and the ground, 
execute a rhythmic dance with their arms and dis- 
taffs, singing to their movement : — 



FIRST INTERLUDE 21 5 

Angustam amice pauperiem pati 
robustus acri militia puer 
condiscat et Parthos feroces 
vexet eques metuendus hasta 
vitamque sub divo et trepidis agat 
in rebus, ilium ex mcenibus hosticis 
matrona bellantis tyranni 
prospiciens et adulta virgo 
suspiret, eheu, ne rudis agminum 
sponsus lacessat regius asperum 
tactu leonem, quern cruenta 
per medias rapit ira caedes. 1 

At the culmination of this, Hercules, who has been 
repelling the attentions of Omphale, at first with 
feeble ennui, but afterwards with increasing determi- 
nation, now rises in grandiose disgust, and — snatching 
from her his lion's skin and club — repudiates her and 
the Nymphs. 

Flinging down the sheep's pelt and setting his foot 
upon it, he breaks his distaff in pieces and, threaten- 
ing Omphale, drives the Nymphs off the scene, left. 
[During this excitement, Servus — who has been 
standing aside — seizes the heap of wool, and exit 
with it in flight.] Turning then to the image 
of the Sphinx, Hercules expresses in dumb show how, 
lured by the riddle of the Sphinx, he aspires to fight 
and conquer the world for her sake. Laying his club 
and lion 's skin devoutly at the foot of the column, he 

1 Horace : Ode II of Book III. 

The literal translation (by A. H. Bryce) is as follows : — 
" Let youth, made strong by active war, learn to endure privation 
in a happy mood; let him as horseman bold with dreaded spear harass 
the daring Mede, and spend his life in open air, and midst alarms of 
foes. Let wife and daughter of the warring king, as from the hostile 
walls they look, heave many a sigh, alas ! lest princely spouse, untried 
in war, provoke the lion, dangerous to stir, whom bloodthirsty anger 
hurries on through thickest of the fight." 



2l6 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

kneels, embraces it, and raises then his arms in suppli- 
cation to the Sphinx. 

Thus kneeling, he is watched furtively at a distance 
by Omphale, who, at his outburst, has run to the edge 
of the foliage, right. Hercules, rising, puts on his 
lion's skin, and brandishing his club heroicly for the 
benefit of the immovable Sphinx, goes off, left. 

Immediately Omphale seizes from among the fo- 
liage a sylvan pipe, and blows on it a brief, appealing 
ditty. At this, from behind the foliage, run out boy- 
mimes, in the guise of Fauns ; she gesticulates to them 
beseechingly. They run back and presently return, 
dancing to pipe-music, accompanying and leading a 
goat, astride of which sits Silenus, an old grotesque 
Satyr, in mask. 

Omphale greets him joyfully and helps him down 
from the goat. She then describes to him in panto- 
mime the late outburst of Hercules — his breaking the 
spindle, his enamoration for the Sphinx, etc., and 
prays his aid and advice. 

Silenus pauses an instant in philosophical absorp- 
tion, then gives a leap and skip. Omphale, seeing 
that he has hit on some plan, expresses her pleasure 
and inquires what his plan may be. Silenus bids her 
call a slave. Omphale claps her hands toward the 
left entrance. Servus enters. Silenus signs to him. 
Servus goes back and returns immediately, rolling in 
a wine-cask, from which he fills an antique beaker. 
From this Silenus sips and approves. He then points 
to the Sphinx and asks if it be that of which Hercules 
is enamoured. Omphale assents. Silenus then directs 
Servus to lift the Sphinx down from the pillar. Ser- 
vus does so, revealing its hollow interior as he carries 
it. Silenus, drawing Omphale's attention to this fact 
of its hollowness, opens the door in the curtain, and 
commands Servus to bear the Sphinx within. Servus 
does so. Silenus, then, pointing to the window above 



FIRST INTERLUDE 2\J 

the door, whispers in the ear of Omphale, who, de- 
lighted, enters the door after Servus. Silenus closes 
the door as Hercules reenters, left. 

The hero has discarded his woman's garb, and 
comes forward now dressed as a man, with lion's skin 
and club — his mask changed to one of an exultant 
and martial expression. 

Silenus greets him with obsequious and cunning 
servility and offers him wine. Hercules, with good- 
natured hauteur, condescends to accept the cup which 
he offers. While he is drinking, the window above 
in the curtain opens, and Omphale thrusts her head 
out, revealing [within] beside her own, the Sphinx's 
head. Silenus secretively motions her to be cautious. 
Seeing his gesture, Hercules looks up, but not swiftly 
enough to detect Omphale, who withdraws. Again 
looking forth, as he turns to drink again, Omphale 
mocks Hercules below, dropping wisps of wool on 
his head, the source of which, however, Hercules fails 
to detect. Silenus explains that the wool is really 
feathers, which fell from a bird flying overhead. 

Hercules now, under the sly persuasions of the old 
Satyr, grows more pleased with the wine, drinks 
finally from the spigot of the cask, and becomes drunk 
— as he becomes so, expressing to Silenus, with in- 
creasing familiarity and descriptive force, all the 
mighty exploits he intends to accomplish in the ser- 
vice of the incomparable Sphinx, whose living proto- 
type he declares he will immediately set forth in 
search of. 

Starting now, humorously drunk, to depart [right] 
he is detained by Silenus, who points upward to the 
window, where now the blank, immovable face of the 
Sphinx looks forth at the sky. Hercules, bewildered, 
asks Silenus if it is really the Sphinx herself and 
alive ? Silenus assents and proves his assertion by 
pointing to the deserted pedestal. At this, Hercules 



2l8 SAPPHO AND PHAOIV 

addresses the Sphinx, with impassioned gestures. 
The Sphinx remains immovable. Hercules becomes 
discouraged. Silenus then puts a pipe in his hand, 
and tells him to play it. He does so, and is rewarded 
by a slow, preternatural look from the Sphinx. At 
this he plays more vociferously and, surrounded 
by the little piping Fauns, performs a serenade be- 
neath the casement, while Silenus, looking on from a 
distance, rubs his hands with sly delight. 

The serenade ends by Hercules, on his knees, im- 
ploring the Sphinx to come down. The Sphinx at 
length consents and the casement closes. Silenus 
calls his Fauns away to the edge of the foliage, and 
Hercules goes to the door. 

For a moment nothing happens and Hercules 
knocks on the steps impatiently with his club. Then 
the door opens and enter the Sphinx — dressed be- 
low in the Greek garments of Omphale, but from the 
waist upward consisting of the sitting image of the 
Sphinx, beneath whose closed wings the arms of 
Omphale are thrust through and have place for mo- 
tion. 

The Sphinx, its tail swinging behind, descends the 
steps, reticent and impassive, attended by Hercules, 
drunk and enamoured. 

Then at the foot of the steps, to the accompaniment 
from the foliage of the piping Fauns, who play softly 
a variation of the serenade theme, Hercules woos the 
Sphinx, who, at the proper moment, succumbs to his 
entreaties. After embracing him amorously, she ex- 
tends her hand to him. He seizes it to kiss ; she 
withdraws it and signifies that he must put a ring on 
the ring-finger. Hercules hunts about him in vain 
for a ring. Calling then Silenus and the Fauns, he 
explains to them the situation. 

Silenus declares that there will be no difficulty ; his 
Fauns will forge him a ring with which to wed the 



FIRST INTERLUDE 219 

Sphinx. At this joyful information, Hercules, the 
Sphinx, and Silenus express their feelings in a dance 1 
with the Fauns, at the climax of which the Fauns 
escort the three masked characters to the door in the 
curtain, through which they pass and disappear, 
while the Fauns, dividing into two groups, dance off 
and exeunt at either side. Simultaneously the two 
theatre slaves remove the stage properties. 




Varius, Maecenas, and Pollio, rising now in laughter, 
pass again to places beyond sight in the Herculaneum 
audience, followed thither by Horace and Virgil, talk- 
ing together. 

The theatre slaves then pass silently across and the 
lights shine dimmer. After a pause, the Herculaneum 
curtain is lowered, discovering again Lesbos — the 
scene of the Tragedy. 

Explicit Interludium Primtim 

1 Before the commencement of this dance, Servus has entered and 
removed the low seat and wine-cask. 



SECOND INTERLUDE 1 

The theatre of Varius remains in dimness, and its 
audience in silence. A shaft of pale light falls upon 
the altar [centre], out of the top of which [where be- 
fore was the tripod] are seen to be growing lilies, 
harebells and vari-coloured wild flowers. 

At the same time, an elfin dance-music is heard off 
scene, and enter [left] to the sound of harps, the girl- 
mimes in guise of Psyches, with little wings. In-and- 
out of the shadows of the shaft of moonlight, these 
trip a light-footed dance, the motif of which is the 
finding and plucking of flowers. At times they run, 
at times they stoop, at times they pause and weave. 
Toward the end of their dance, they espy the grow- 
ing lilies on the altar and, encircling it, pluck away 
the flowers till the marble is bare. Weaving these 
into ropes, they dance off the scene, right. 

These have already gone when enter [left] the boy- 
mimes, guised as Cupids, the one-half carrying long 
golden sledge-hammers, the other half holding tongs 
and great pincers made of gold. As they enter, 
there rises out of the top of the altar an anvil, glow- 
ing red-hot, upon which gleams a great gold ring. 
Coming forward, as before the Psyches danced their 
measures simulative of the plucking of flowers, so 
now the Cupids carrying their gleaming sledge- 
hammers and tongs — their wrists and ankles fas- 
tened with golden cymbals — execute a dance, the 

1 This Interlude, like the First, occupies approximately the time of 
a usual entr'acte. 

223 



224 SAPPHO AND PHAON 

motif of which is the hammering and forging of rings 
upon viewless anvils — at the strokes of their play- 
labour clashing their cymbals together to the music 
of flutes and strings. Similarly toward the end of 
their dance, having discovered the anvil glowing 
upon the altar, they encircle it, and half of them 
seizing the great ring with their pincers, the other 
half ply upon it their golden hammers, in rhythm with 
the music. 

Finally their leader, lifting the ring with his tongs, 
bears it away [left] and is followed off the scene by 
the others, dancing. 

At this moment the door in the curtain opens, and 
enter Silenus in the vestments of a priest, followed 
by Hercules and the Sphinx fantastically garlanded 
as bridegroom and bride, — their steps lighted by 
Servus, whose torch illuminates the scene. 

Silenus leads the way down the steps straight to 
the altar, coming round to the other side of which he 
turns his back and faces Hercules and the Sphinx, 
who stand facing him on the other side. At the 
same time reenter, from right and left, the leaders 
of the girl-mimes and boy-mimes, who — at either 
side of the altar — proffer to Silenus respectively a 
rope of flowers and a small gold ring. Laying the 
flowers on the altar, Silenus bestows his benediction 
upon Hercules and the Sphinx, to the former of 
whom he extends the ring. Hercules takes it and as 
the Sphinx extends her left hand, he slips upon her 
ring-finger the gold ring. 

Instantly a clash of cymbals is heard from the left, 
and a clapping of palms from the right, and reenter 
— dancing — the Cupids and Psyches, who encircle 
the scene just as Servus removes from the bride the 
great mask of the Sphinx, thereby revealing her to 
the astounded Hercules — as Omphale, who em- 
braces him, exulting in her ring. 



SECOND INTERLUDE 225 

With gestures of comic resignation, Hercules at 
the side of Omphale follows Silenus, accompanied by 
the Cupids and Psyches in procession, to the door 
in the curtain, wherein all pass and disappear to 
the jubilant cymbal-clashings of the Cupids and the 
flower-rope-wreathings of the Psyches. The door 
closes, the music sounds more faintly and dies away. 

For a moment all is blackness and silence ; then 
the Herculaneum curtain, descending, reveals again 
the temple in Lesbos. 

Explicit Interludium Secundum. 



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